He gained notability as the creator of primal therapy, a treatment for mental illness that involves repeatedly descending into, feeling, and experiencing long-repressed childhood pain.

Janov was the author of many books, most notably The Primal Scream (1970),[1] as well as The Biology of Love and Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script That Rules our Lives.

Arthur Janov was born in Los Angeles, California, and grew up in Boyle Heights, a low income neighborhood east of Downtown L.A., populated mainly by Jews, Latinos, and Slavic immigrants.

[3] He did an internship at the Hacker Psychiatric Clinic in Beverly Hills, worked for the Veterans' Administration at Brentwood Neuropsychiatric Hospital and was in private practice from 1952 until his death in 2017.

[8][9] During a therapy session, Janov heard what he describes as, "an eerie scream welling up from the depths of a young man lying on the floor".

[12] The idea of The Primal Scream came when one of his patients told of a theatrical performance at Conway Hall, London, in which Raphael Montañez Ortiz dressed in diapers shouted "Mommy!

[13][14] Janov's ideas had a significant impact on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Lennon's first solo album after The Beatles, which centers themes of parental abandonment and psychological suffering and served to popularize primal scream therapy.

[16] The influence on Tears for Fears is strongest on their first album The Hurting (including "Mad World"[17] and "Ideas as Opiates," which is named for a chapter in Janov's Prisoners of Pain) and in their No.