Word: janover
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...DIFFICULTY in Janov's argument arises in his rejection of symbolic behavior for what he calls real behavior. In the return of a person to his self, according to Janov, he begins to behave according to real needs and not according to wants which appear as needs because of neurosis...
...Janov can not reject symbolic behavior in society. Unlike bodily functions, social actions must be interpreted according to a set of shared symbols. For people to reason--to conceive of activity while not in the process of acting--they require a set of symbols whose meanings other people understand. This system is language. Without language, conceiving of anything in the world is impossible, so that our power of conceptualization rests entirely on languages created by society. Alienation, which depends on conceptualization, comes after and not before the formation of symbols. It is in this sense that society creates humanity...
...OTHER GAP in Janov's theory is his understanding of the history of needs. The repressed individual needs rooted in our biological system never change throughout the course of our physical development. My unfulfilled need to be held when I was two would emerge in Primal Therapy precisely as I would have expressed it as an infant, through tears and physical contortions. But social needs change as societies evolve. Each act of production necessitates the act of producing instruments for that production, and so on, so that the fulfillment of each social need creates new social needs. Society is continually...
...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...