Primal therapy is a trauma-based psychotherapy created by Arthur Janov during the 1960s, who argued that neurosis is caused by the repressed pain of childhood trauma.
Janov believed that talking therapies deal primarily with the cerebral cortex and higher-reasoning areas and do not access the source of Pain within the more basic parts of the central nervous system.
[1] Primal therapy is used to re-experience childhood pain—i.e., felt rather than conceptual memories—in an attempt to resolve the pain through complete processing and integration, becoming real.
An intended objective of the therapy is to lessen or eliminate the hold early trauma exerts on adult behaviour.
Singer-songwriter John Lennon, actor James Earl Jones, and pianist Roger Williams were prominent advocates of primal therapy.
[2] Primal therapy has since declined in popularity, partly because Janov had not demonstrated in research the outcomes necessary to convince psychologists of its effectiveness.
Janov contended that the neurotic can thereby re-experience their feelings in response to the original traumatic incidents but can now express the emotions that at that time were repressed, thereby resolving the trauma.
In primal theory, consciousness is not simply awareness but refers to a state of the entire organism, including the brain, in which there is "fluid access" between the parts.
According to Janov, Primal Pains are imprinted in the lower brain first, then later the limbic system, and still later intellectual defenses are formed by the cortex simply because this is the sequence of neurological development.
[15] Throughout childhood, more elaborate "defenses" develop, as the early unmet needs keep pressing for satisfaction in symbolic, and therefore inevitably unsatisfying, ways.
A complete primal has been found, according to Janov and Holden,[16] to be marked by a "pre-primal" rise in vital signs such as pulse, core body temperature, and blood pressure leading up to the feeling experience and then a falling off of those vital signs to a more normal level than where they began.
Based on Janov's own in-house studies, Janov and Holden[16] concluded that the pre-primal rise in vital signs indicates the person's neurotic defenses are being stretched by the ascending Pain to the point of producing an "acute anxiety attack" (the conventional description), and the fall to more normal levels than pre-primal levels indicates a degree of resolution of the Pain.
Janov initiated from the outset small-scale research using questionnaires and measures of EEG, body temperature, blood pressure, and pulse from his patients.
[25] A 1971 Pittsburgh Press article cited a University of California at Irvine study on primal therapy patients that showed a slowing of brain waves.
Janov claimed that primal therapy reduced, in some patients, the frequency and the amplitude of Alpha waves, core body temperature (as much as three degrees) and blood pressure (as much as 30 percent).
[20] Authors Prochaska and Norcross called the research by Janov "largely uncontrolled, non comparative and short term.
[35] In a 1982 paper published in the journal Zeitschrift für Psychosomatische Medizin und Psychoanalyse, Ehebald and Werthmann report that, following a review of the scientific literature, they found "no on-going reports of primal therapy's therapeutic results, no statistical studies and no follow-up studies."
Concluding that primal therapy is not a valid therapeutic technique, they stated that most psychotherapists in the Federal Republic of Germany believe it to be questionable in theory and dangerous in practice.
Gardner also details a protest over the publication of Janov's book The Biology of Love, which is referred to as "Bogus Psychiatry".
[39] Primal Therapy began in 1967, when Janov had a pivotal psychotherapy session with Danny Wilson (a pseudonym).
Janov developed a theory of psychopathology that neurosis is caused by repressed emotional memories of childhood trauma and could be resolved by re-experiencing and expressing.
[2] In 1971, two trainee primal therapists, Joseph Hart and Richard Corriere, abandoned Arthur Janov and started the Center for Feeling Therapy.
Hart claimed: "When we left Janov, forty percent of the patients came with us....we found that most had been faking their primals.
Actor James Earl Jones,[46] pianist Roger Williams,[2] and actress Dyan Cannon[47] underwent primal therapy and advocated it.
[52][53] Lennon and Ono had three weeks of intensive treatment in England before Janov returned to Los Angeles, where they had four months of therapy.
Lennon's album featured a number of songs that were directly affected by his experience in therapy, including "Remember", "I Found Out", "Isolation", "God", "Mother", "My Mummy's Dead", "Well Well Well," and "Working Class Hero", as were a number of songs from his Imagine album, including "How?