Word: janov
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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However, the comparison of encounter groups with Arthur Janov's primal therapy is completely out of order: The primal patient is directed to specific feelings and is aided by the therapist to integrate the experience, so as not to become subject to unconnected, dangerous, psychologically damaging feelings...
...approach, similar to Arthur Janov's "primal scream" therapy, is to teach members of his groups "to grab hold of a feeling-any feeling-and express it in a series of yells, screams and moans which increase in volume to almost unbearable intensity." Overwrought, the patient is then soothed by the rest of his group, as well as by Casriel, if he is present, or by one of the ex-patients who run most of Casriel's groups. No effort is made to understand the emotions that have so painfully -and dangerously-been aroused...
...JANOV, TO improve his theory, must be much more explicit on the nature of needs. Needs which, if unfulfilled can cause neurosis, are communicated to the body by processes within the body. You need no one else to tell you if you have "butterflies in your stomach." But social needs are communicated only by socially created symbols. Therapy provides a return to the self; politics creates a restructuring of systems. The ideal society requires both, but it is foolish to think they are identical processes. Indeed, if a therapy makes the person more individualistic, if it isolates him from other...
...evaluate two other kinds of evidence of considerable importance for weighing Janov's final contribution. I am unfamiliar with Janov's "scientific" evidence; his physiological theories and experimental data are contained in The Anatomy of Mental Illness, a book written before The Primal Revolution. I also cannot evaluate Janov's success as a therapist. He has, for example, been calumnized for the current expense involved in Primal Therapy. However, he reportedly hopes to overcome that obstacle as the movement towards his therapy spreads...
...fitting that Janov wrote his first book in 1970, when the fervor for ill-conceived psychological non-insights was already dying down. Bookshelves may one day be less crowded with self-indulgent speculation on psychology. But whether or not Janov turns out to be a major figure in the field, he is no doubt far down the right track...