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This Month’s Recommendations:
1. The Scientific Revolution Claim
Be sure to check out the website editor’s most recent argument against primal therapy, and perhaps one of the best pages here since it is fully cited and complete. I encourage all people considering doing primal therapy, or perhaps embarking on a career in what they believe is a new science in psychology, to read this first: http://debunkingprimaltherapy.com/the-scientific-revolution-claim/
2. The Psychological Society (1979) by Martin L. Gross
Check out the new page: The Psychological Society (1979), which is a great book excerpt.
Also, be aware of another awesome new page with an excerpt from Victims of Memory (1996), by Pendergrast.
3. A Tribute to a Clinical Psychology Professor
In spring 2006, in response to a short essay this website editor wrote that echoed Janov’s theory that pain is stored, accumulates and leads to enduring problems (such as borderline personality disorder, etc), an excellent clinical psychology professor took the time to help a naive student with these valuable words:
The creativity you evidence is admirable, but you must keep it informed by well established data. We understand quite a fair amount about pain nowadays. Pain is not stored because pain is not a thing, it’s a signal. You’re using a mechanistic or Cartesian model to conceptualize something that requires a systems approach (if you want a model that can explain most of the data we have on how pain works). Of course, there are pain phenomena that give the impression that pain might be stored, but these phenomena and most others are readily explained by a systems approach. A mechanistic model might explain the appearance of stored pain, but not much else. For example, neurotransmitters do not operate like fat cells. Substance P, the pain neurotransmitter cannot sit indefinitely in the synapse causing chronic pain. Indeed, the way the pain ointment capsaicin works is by causing all the substance P in the topical area to be dumped into the synapses. It takes the body a couple of hours to re-synthesize enough to fire again. Chronic pain has many causes such as short-circuiting of communication pathways, homeostatic adaptation to the presence of a pain signal as normative such that the nervous system keeps play the same signal even though the original source (e.g. the leg) ceased previously. (Think of a CD skipping over and over again. There is no “accumulation of music” merely a literal signal rut.) The significance of all this is not trivial because the other model will suggest quite different treatments (e.g. “draining the excess pain”) that might be worse than ineffective.
See also this website’s page called Evidence from Clinical Psychology, from which this extract was taken.
4. Check out John Lennon on the Dick Cavett Show, a video recorded September 11, 1971 (John mentions Janov shortly after 3 minutes into the video). See also this site’s The Post-Primal John Lennon.
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“Scientific knowledge is public in a special sense…scientific knowledge does not exist solely in the mind of a particular individual. In an important sense, scientific knowledge does not exist at all until it has been submitted to the scientific community for criticism and empirical testing by others.”
How To Think Straight About Psychology(p. 10). Keith Stanovich (6th Ed, 2001). (see PEER REVIEW section).
“Social psychology is filled with data showing that once a person makes a commitment in front of others about a position or belief; it is more likely that the person will cling to that position. Imagine the degree of commitment made by the people you met in this chapter: at their therapist’s command, they rolled and moaned, beat cushions…screamed, yelled, laughed, cried, insulted others, and were themselves humiliated and insulted.”
“Crazy” Therapies (p. 130), Margaret Singer Ph.D. and Janja Lalich Ph.D., (1996) (see CRITICAL BOOKS section)
“Many teachers lament the woeful lack of science education of their undergraduate students…This problem is also widespread in graduate clinical psychology programs and psychiatric residencies, where students can earn a PhD or an MD without ever having considered the basic epistemological assumptions and methods of their profession…[In a study of psychiatrist training] rarely do they learn to be skeptical, ask questions, analyse research, or consider alternative explanations or treatments.” (page xi)
[In the footnote it is noted that not all clinical psychologists are poor scientists]
“By the 1960s and 1970s, as the popularity of psychoanalysis was waning, new therapies were emerging. It was easy to tell how pseudoscientific they were…Martin Gross’s book The Psychological Society (1978) included …,primal scream therapy,…” (page xiii)
Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology, (edited by Lilienfeld, Lynn, Lohr) from the foreword essay “The Widening Scientist-Practitioner Gap,” written by social psychologist Carol Tavris, Ph.D.
For a review of this book by Professor Colin Feltham, see the The Counselling Center website.
What gets us into trouble
is not what we don’t know
It’s what we know for sure
That just ain’t so
- Mark Twain
This is a website designed to give a detailed and well researched criticism and evaluation of primal therapy. It is a critique on the treatment and theory which was first developed and popularized by Arthur Janov (Ph.D.).
It is written with the protections of the U.S. Constitution’s first amendment (free speech and press) and the accepted rule in western science that theories and treatments can be criticized. These rights cannot be abridged by any means, including by Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP lawsuits, see http://www.gjs.net/web-slap.htm ).
The idea for the first article was originally inspired by social psychology and the widely accepted standards and rules of science (vs. pseudoscience). That article turned into sections 1 to 5 on this website. Then the website was created to provide a place for counterpoint information on primal therapy. Since then, other sources and evidence has also been drawn on. The aim is to show people what information is out there, and let them discover it for themselves, and decide for themselves. This critique and sharing of information is designed to make a positive constructive contribution and to help people.
Although it was not part of the original plan for this site, in response to requests from some readers this website grew to include more testimonial type evidence. Included are personal experiences of primal therapy, from more than one source, to further inform the potential consumer. However, those sections are not necessarily the most important on the site (the section on falsifiability I think is more important for example) and I suggest reading section 5 on how to weight testimonial evidence before reading those parts.
This website will protect primal therapy participant’s confidentiality while still informing future potential consumers.
This website in essence acts like the dissenting voice within the isolated in-group in the Asch experiments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRh5qy09nNw&feature=related (link updated Aug 2 2009)
On this website there are still some incomplete sections, and due to other commitments it may remain that way for some time. The priority is to get some of the information out there to stimulate critical thinking and to show in which subject areas you can find further information.
”We have come to claim our promise, O Oz.”
”What promise?” asked Oz.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the book written by Frank Baum.
Pseudoscience begins with a hypothesis—usually one which is appealing emotionally…—and then looks only for items which appear to support it. Conflicting evidence is ignored. Generally speaking, the aim of pseudoscience is to rationalize strongly held beliefs, rather than to investigate and find out what’s actually going on, or to test various possibilities. Pseudoscience specializes in jumping to ‘congenial conclusions,’ grinding ideological axes, appealing to pre-conceived ideas and to widespread misunderstandings.
From the website International Cultic Studies Association: http://www.csj.org/studyindex/studycrthk/study_pseddoscience/study_factpseudo.htm
(see sections 2-5 and DETECTING REAL SCIENCE for more on what is called the demarcation problem – the distinguishing between science and pseudoscience)
In general, if your therapist is telling you that you have to get worse before you get better, is tearing you apart rather than building you up, is letting group members insult and ridicule you, is insisting that you must go deeper and deeper and deeper to feel the feeling, or is doing anything that smacks of old-fashioned ventilation theories, get out as fast as you can and look for a supportive therapist who will listen and respond with human decency.
“Crazy” Therapies (p. 131), Singer and Lalich, (1996).
When you are studying any matter…
Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or
by what you think would have beneficial social effects if it were believed.
Look only and solely at what are the facts.
Bertrand Russell, 1959
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