Word: janov
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Feeling, like all elements in Janov's picture of human behavior, involves not only mental awareness but the biological processes accompanying or underlying that awareness. Feeling is sensation plus a correct awareness of the origin of that sensation. Our stomachs may tighten if we need to cry. We feel that need if we are aware both of muscles tightening and of the act we need to perform. If a mother tells her son, "Big boys don't cry," for enough years, she may cause his psychophysiological system to block the connection between stomach-tightening and the need...
...first volume, The Primal Scream, published three year ago, provoked intense personal reactions, both in those to whose common sense Janov appealed and in those who claimed the book was unmitigated nonsense. Almost all the people I know who have read the book were visibly upset by it. None were psychology majors and, therefore, they were all relatively unaccustomed to "intellectualizing" about psychology. While reading Janov's chapter on "The Nature of Feeling," I discovered I was reliving, in rather vivid detail, several childhood experiences I would have thought I'd entirely forgotten. I am not surprised by those...
...great usefullness of The Primal Scream, though, stems from the theoretical issues Janov raises. Unfortunately, his critics rarely discuss him on theoretical grounds. Competing psychologists smirk and point out connections between Primal Theory and older theories, most of which Janov acknowledges in The Primal Scream. Some claim that various other therapies can be helpful and hardly address the substance of Janov's work. Some critics strike at Janov's often naive language, undoubtedly a vulnerable point but not an excuse for avoiding the usefulness of his ideas. Janov clearly leaves himself open to such criticism, saying things like...
...JANOV'S PICTURE of human psychology appears relatively straight-forward. People are creatures with their species's characteristic needs. "Need" is a "total physiologic state," the physical demand for certain requirements and the mental ramifications of our biological functions. He says...
...Janov makes considerable strides beyond liberal psychotherapy, although sometimes he seems unclear as to the theoretical nature of the advance. In practical terms, he is satisfied by his cures. But his attempts to explain why are often agonizingly circular: I'm right because it works; it works because I'm right. By understanding the nature of Janov's stumbling advance, it is easier to articulate the shortcomings of his theory. Most of these weaknesses appear more explicitly in The Primal Revolution, a new and less formally structured book written to answer questions Janov believes The Primal Scream leaves unanswered...