This is my best effort to reduce a couple thousand pages of Arthur Janov’s books to a 15-minute fictional account. I try to get to the essence of what tens of thousands of people have experienced during Primal Therapy — through the experience of one character, Dylan Steffan, my main / narrating character, who is now 34. (Janov would have been 48.)
Los Angeles
May 1973
Before I started psychiatry school in September, I’d mastered the steps in integrating Otto Rank’s approach to psychology into my work with clients. I’d been able to help many of them move a long way toward maximizing both their individuation and their social connectedness, and in some ways re-creating themselves – the Rankian goals in therapy – even while “mountaineering” into transpersonal territory with Assagioli-inspired visualization.
But much was still missing. I’d added a Maslow-style approach, but I wasn’t good at it yet, and few of my clients became self-actualizing. I lacked a comprehensive view of the transformation of consciousness and the transpersonal terrain. Most of all, I felt helpless when their traumas come up – and that’s why I’ve come to Los Angeles.
I arrive at the Primal Therapy center and take a seat in the reception room. I’ve read Dr. Arthur Janov’s book The Primal Scream several times. Seems like a promising approach to trauma and neurosis. Now I’m ready to try his Primal Therapy.
I’m introduced to Dr. Janov and after we take our seats in his office, he begins answering my questions.
“What’s the goal?”
“An organism free of tension, Dylan. You function in a new way. The incessant struggle is over and you have no need for relentlessly driving yourself into the ground. No obsessions, no compulsions. Instead of chasing endless wants, you focus only on what you need. You’re not a robot, not regimented. You’re not imagining that real life is out there in the future. You’re not looking forward to this or that to escape the present. You’re able to truly be yourself and to enjoy yourself. You deeply feel the life within you.”
I smile. “Sounds great. And this transforms our relationships?”
“Very much so,” says Janov. “You can sense the pulse of life within other people. You can sense the pain of others and can be acutely aware of their drives and needs. You’re not struggling for approval or to be treated as someone special and important. You can be with another human being completely – which is rare in our society – and listen to the person completely. You can be in real relationships between loving people – and give real love to relatives and friends.”
“Terrific. So how are you defining neurosis?”
“As infants and children, we have needs – for food, for staying warm and dry, for being held and caressed, and for growing and developing at our own pace. If any of these needs go unmet for a length of time, the neurotic process begins. We hurt. And we shut off the pain by shutting off awareness of our need.”
“We separate our self from our needs and our feelings,” I recall from his book.
“Yes,” Janov replies. “That shuts off the pain, but it splits our organism. Unmet needs from infancy and childhood then last a lifetime, exerting a force, driving our motivations, producing our interests. All trying to satisfy the needs that were unfulfilled when we were young.”
“This is caused by one big trauma or a slow accretion of small traumas?”
“Both. There are minor primal scenes – when we’re ridiculed, neglected, driven to perform, rejected, humiliated. Small events that strike at our real self. And usually one major primal scene – one crucial event that was catastrophic.”
“At what age?”
“Between birth and age seven, in almost all cases.”
“This is the cause of neurosis?”
“Yes. We change real needs into symbolic ones. The neurotic is never content for long. Nothing is ever exactly right. The neurotic manufactures struggles, and is constantly activated by tension. There’s a void, and it’s a bottomless pit, it can’t be filled.”
I nod. “Symbolic?”
“Neurosis is symbolic behavior in defense against excessive pain. Symbolic satisfaction cannot satisfy real needs, so neurosis goes on in perpetuity.”
“You write that neurosis is a split, being disconnected from our feelings?”
Janov nods. “And the more assaults on the real self, the deeper the split – and the deeper the chasm between our real self and our unreal self.”
I nod. “Neurosis is caused by pain.”
“Yes. A reaction of our organism to pain. The child’s organism shuts down against full realization and becomes unconscious of this realization. Just like physical pain can render us unconscious. Primal pain is unexperienced hurt.”
“And this results in tension and anxiety and defenses and neurosis?”
“That’s right. Anxiety is unfocused fear and is prevalent in neurosis. Neurosis involves a constellation of defenses.”
“And Primal Therapy really does cure all this?”
“Yes. Primal Therapy dismantles the cause of tension, defense systems, and neurosis. Primal Therapy overthrows the whole system.”
“It’s all as simple as that?”
“That’s all you need to think about to begin, Dylan. Let’s begin.”
I’ve arrived thinking I’m in pretty good shape, mental-health-wise. I have a psychology degree, an M.D., a year of psychiatry school, and six years of practice as a psychotherapist. I’m confident that I’m functioning well.
Dr. Janov and I move to sound-proof therapy room. I lay down on the couch and begin discussing little tensions and other mild problems of the day – a slight backache, the frustrations of traffic.
Janov asks me to remember my early life. I say that my father Aidan was a bit remote and at times too harsh but that I had many good times with him: playing catch when I was a boy, listening to music with him, reading the comics and later the news in the newspaper and discussing it with him, enjoying card games and board games and quality family time.
Then I find myself saying, “however, there wasn’t enough affection”. Janov responds with sink into an early situation that evoked a good deal of feeling in you. “I feel tense.” Sink into the feeling. “I really only spent time with him on Saturday and Sunday evenings. He was a workaholic. A good provider, just hardly ever home.”
Feel that, stay with it! “I feel tight all over. Yeah, I really felt remote from my father.” Breathe deeply, pull that feeling from your belly! “He wasn’t that much of a father. He would come home at 7 or 8, eat dinner, and sit on the couch and fall asleep. When I played in baseball or basketball games, he never showed up to see me play. He was always at the office.” Ask your dad for help. ”What?!” Ask your dad for help. “No, he won’t care enough to come.”
Describe your home life as a child. “Edifying. Quaker services every Sunday with my Uncle Riis and Aunt Carmen. School, family, church – one united force. Lots of nagging to keep up with the agenda, a major drive to get me to take on a lot and to excel at everything I took on. I was expected to respect my elders, do as I was told, and be a well-behaved boy at all times. No jumping around, no noise, no sitting on chairs in the living room, no touching anything nice, hardly any playing with other kids.”
What’s your reaction to this way of life? “I’ve never really questioned it.” You were passive. “Yes, I guess I was passive.” You still are passive. “Yes, I guess I still am.” How do you feel now? “I want to burn the whole agenda to the ground.”
Why? “I should’ve been left free. Free to play. Free to develop and grow in my own way. Free of constant pressure to be perfect. I shouldn’t have been made to constantly feel like there was something wrong with me – for being a normal boy with normal energies and enthusiasms.”
You felt left out. You felt like a little kid with his nose up against the glass, trying to get into life. The tension rises all over my body.
On the second day, I tell Dr. Janov that I have a tightness in my chest and a burning in my gut. Why? “Cause I’m angry.” Ask your Dad to help you get it all out – the tightness, the burning, the anger.
After I do this a few times – calling out – I realize that “I’m talking to the dad that I wished for. I want to get that dad to accept me as I am.” What do you have to do next? ”Get the dad I wished for to get out the feeling of being left alone and suppressed.” I laugh a while. I tear up for a while. I’ve felt so left out and so suppressed for so long.
On the third day, I make a new observation. “All I wanted was a dad who would care for me, love me, help me, and stick up for me the way I naturally am.” What did you do with that feeling? “I found ways to help other people. A neighbor nearby, a relative there, a friend over here. I became a benign, benevolent presence to people so they would like me and want me to be around them.”
But your dad did care. Yes. Tell him. “Dad, I know you cared.” Louder. “Dad, I know you cared.” With real feeling. “Dad, I know you cared!”
On the fourth day, I feel dejected. “Did I build my whole life around words of suppression and the feeling of being left alone by my father?” Tell your father what he means to you. I talk to Dad until there’s nothing left to say. “I love you, Dad. Thanks for being there as much as you could, Dad. Your love and care weren’t wasted. You didn’t fail, Dad.”
Day five. So far you’ve left your mother out of all this. “Ah, Gwen.” Tell me. “Such demanding standards. There were very few positive, happy times, and very few times that were even comfortable. I couldn’t relax around her. I couldn’t be myself around her.”
Day six. You haven’t yet mentioned your marriage and divorce. “I can see things clearly now. She reminded me too much of my times growing up. There was a distance between us.” She was shut down. “Yes, that shutdown feeling – leaving me feeling left out and uncomfortable.”
You expected her to be like your mother, and she was. “Well, Mother was demanding but not shut down. So it wasn’t all my expectations or projections. My wife was shut down emotionally. Unpleasant childhood for me, and then an unpleasant marriage. After four years, we decided we couldn’t make each other happy and we filed for divorce.”
No kids? “No kids. I fear I may not be able to have children. She has two children now and is quite happy about it. That was probably a factor in her desire for a divorce. Perhaps I’ll wait to marry again until I find a woman who has no desire to have children.”
On the seventh day, I say that “I don’t know what the new me is like, so I’m not ready to turn against the old me, the only me I know.”
What have you obtained this first week?
“My past. A past in which love was withheld from me when I didn’t behave up to expectations. All those critiques of everything I said and did! No wonder I feel I have to be perfect to have value. I fear being imperfect. If I fail, I will prove Dad right.”
The eighth day. Remember a time when your mother and father displayed warmth toward you. “My Mom’s eyes filled with tears when I got a severe flu. My Dad took me to a few pro baseball games. I remember napping a few times in my mother’s lap. I remember touching my father’s face. He sang a jingle to me a few times while he shaved. But I was never hugged.”
Day nine. What do you feel today? “I’m angry. I’m tired of feeling bad for Dad cause he was a bad dad. What about me?” Now, at last, my eyes really well up with tears, and after a while I scream. I scream for Dad’s coldness and absence. I scream for Mom’s coldness and constant nagging. I scream for both of them, with their drive for me to meet absurdly, painfully high expectations and their disapproval and condemnation whenever they weren’t satisfied with my performance in one area or another. I writhe around and then I let out a piercing scream. This is the primal scream. Breathe deep. Scream. Shout. Let it all out.
Days ten through nineteen. More primals. Not always a primal scream but I release more and more primal pain.
The ultimate primal scream comes on the nineteenth day. I go back to age four, when the major split occurred for me.
I relive the feeling of having not been allowed to play as a toddler and young child – or never being allowed to play for long. Not allowed to ever do what I wanted to do.
Just two demanding people pushing me, driving me. Mother all day every day – “you can achieve it, Dylan!” – but always her goals, never mine.
I’m writhing about, and I let out a scream as if someone is trying to murder me. Which, in a way, they were.
Day 20. For the first time, no primal pain comes up. Am I clear of primal pain? Even Dr. Janov doesn’t want to claim that. You’ve gone as far as you can go – being cured of neurosis through Primal Therapy – at this point in your life.
Day 21. The final day. What have you become?
“I’m like a tender shoot just coming out of the earth. I feel lighter, less burdened, and lovely waves of feeling flow through me all day. I’m a symphony of feeling – a harmony of rich and varied feelings, complementing one another.
“My energy is here and my fears, sadness, joys – each has its time. The tension is gone. The trouble sleeping is gone.
“I feel the hurt of that lost love I needed so much as a child. But I’m free of the unconscious influence of that lost love. I’m free of much of my neurosis.
“My feelings and body have plenty to say to me, and now their input isn’t blocked. I’m listening, so they have more influence on me than ever.
“I’m becoming a whole person and my psyche is freer than it’s ever been.”
Primal Therapy has proven to me that I cannot ignore trauma and fully help my clients. I understand trauma’s importance more than I ever have, and the importance of healing trauma for most clients. There’s no turning back.
But there are two obstacles to me becoming a certified Primal therapist.
First, after my sessions are over, Janov declares to me that Primal Therapy is never to be combined with any other kind of therapy. I find this odd. Much of what he’s doing can be done by any competent therapist. He doesn’t own the resolution of trauma, for Heaven’s sake.
Second, Janov insists on atheism and on the rejection of any belief in the afterlife. He rejects 100 percent of human spiritual experience.
I hit back on this. “Anyone who has a spiritual experience is suffering from mental illness and just needs more Primal Therapy sessions to get rid of it?”
“Yes,” Janov says, “that’s right.”
“I could never accept that,” I say. “I commune with Deity every day in contemplative prayer – and experience the Divine every time I do.”
He shrugs.
It doesn’t matter. I’m quite sure that the nonproprietary aspects of Primal Therapy can be used by any good therapist.
As I leave Janov’s office for the final time, my approach seems complete. I will combine nonproprietary Primal work with the best thinking and methods of Assagioli, Maslow, and Rank.
But things are far from complete.
That's a pretty good walk through of Janov. Congratulations on the job of condensing the material. Great work.