Here is the text from an informative article about primal therapy, written in Conocer, a science periodical in Spain, in January 1986. The Spanish text now follows, followed by a Google-translated English version under the Spanish version.
Conocer, Jan 1986, Number 36.
(Page 92):
PSICOLOGIA
Gritad, y sereis curados!
Asi podia resumirse la idea central de la “teoria primal”, que pretende curar a los neuroticos haciendoles revivir los sufrimientos de su infancia. Y aunque el padre de la idea, norteamericano de nacionalidad, acaba de cerrar su “Instituto”, son numerosos los psiquiatras fascinados por ese tipo de terapias.
(Page 93):
HASTA el pasado mes de agosto, los transeutes que prestasen un oido indiscreto a los rumores procedentes de un tranquilo hotelito particular de la avenida parisiense del Marechal Foch, podian escuchar con cierta frecuecia sollozos y gritos de dolor: a veces, incluso autenticos alaridos. Sin embargo, dentro de la casa no se torturaba a nadie, al menos en el sentido usual del termino, contra su voluntad. A pesar de encontrarse en el mismo lugar, aquello nada tenia que ver con el antro que la Gestapo (page 94) ocupo hace mas de cuarenta anos.
Los pacientes cuyas quejas podian escucharse intentaban curar las neurosis que ensombrecian sus vidas desde la infancia y que hasta entonces ningun tratamiento habia sido capaz de aliviar. Y el edificio era la sede del Instituto Primal Europeo (IPE), fundado y dirigido por el psicoterapeuta norteamericano Arthur Janov.
Janov reivindicabam desde la aparicion de su primer libro sobre el terna (“The Primal Scream”, el grito primal) en los Estados Unidos, hace quince anos, la paternidad en exclusiva de su metodo para los institutos primales por el fundados. Aunque se de el caso, actualmente, de que la sede central se Paris sin aviso previo, acaba de cerrar, definitivamente. Al parecer, por agotamiento fisico y psiquico de su fundador, Lo que no ha impedido la proliferacion, en los Estados Unidos y en Francia, pero tambien en otros paises europeos y en Japon, de jovenes psicoterapeutas que ofrecen sus servicios con terapias similares.
Y a todo esto, que es exactamente la terapia primal. Celebrada por su descubridor y su seguidores como una revolucion en el tratamiento de las neurosis e incluso de las psicosis?
Conviene senalar, ante todo, que el adjetivo “primal” no es espanol; en ingles corresponderia a original, fundamental. Segun el credo janovista, todos llegamos al mundo con nuestra necesidades primales: ser alimentado, estar protegido y resguardado, crecer y desarrollarnos segun nuestro propio ritmo, ser tomados en brazos y acariciados, ser estimulados.
Si estas necesidades basicas no se ven satisfechas, o lo son solo parcialmente, el nino sufre, Para sobrevivir, debe expulsar ese sufrimiento del campo de la consciencia. Sin embargo, las necesidades no desaparecen por el hecho de ser inhibidas y, tarde o temprano, reaparecen bajo forma simbolica. Un ejempio, quiza, podria ser el del nino destetado antes de tiempo; dejara muy pronto de sentir la necesidad de mamar, pero, una vez adulto, quiza fume sin parar, chupando ansiosamente el cigarrillo.
Por supuesto, la neurosis no aparece en cuanto el nino reprime sus necesidades por vez primera. Pero si empieza en ese momento el proceso que, por acumulacion, desembocara en la neurosis, Y es que el nino vive en un contexto en donde no solo tiene que satisfacer sus necesidades, sino tambien las de sus padres. Janov no evoca solamente la condicion dolorosa de los ninos maltratados, humillados privados de todo amor, ni los casos que pertenecen a los tribunales, como los ninos martirizados o victimas de agresiones sexuales. El nino sufre, segun el, cuando se le obliga a sonreir “para que parezca feliz:; cuando se le ensena a decir “adios” con la mano y luego a decir “gracias”, “por favor”; cuando se le impide ser demasiado ruidoso o demasiado hablador, y mas adelante, cuando se le pide que tenga buenas notas en el colegio, etcetera.
La neurosis, basada en la “escena primal mayor”
El nino sufre, siempre segun Janov, porque cada vez que se ve en la imposibilidad de ser a la vez real y amado, se va haciendo mas irreal y neurotico. Y llega un dia en el que un acontecimiento inclina la balanza a favor de lo irreal y aparece la neurosis. Acontecimiento que, segun Janov, supone la escena primal mayor.
La forma que tome la neurosis correspondera a los puntos debiles de cada individuo. Puede encarnarse en trastornos organicos (sobre todo, digestivos) de naturaleza psicosomatica o en la busqueda incontrolada de satisfacciones simbolicas que sustituyen, sin que el paciente pueda saberlo, a las satisfacciones reales a las que renuncio antano. Segun los casos, se convertira en bulimico, alcoholico, toxicomano; buscara siempre nuevas aventuras sexuales, sera autoritario y tiranico, oprimira a sus propios hijos del mismo modo que el fue oprimido…
De esta manera, la neurosis se transmite de generacion en generacion. No puede aliviarse por la satisfaccion de las necesidades neuroticas, puesto que estas solo son sustitutos simbolicos de necesidades reales no satisfechas. Por ello, el neurotico esta condenado a vivir en un estado de tension permanente.
La tecnica de la terapia primal descansa en esta construccion teorica. El paciente es incitado a sumergirse en su pasado, yendo al encuentro de las escenas traumatizantes que le empujaron a abandonar su yo real y cuyo recuerdo yace oculto en el inconsciente. Se le lleva a no evitar ya lo que le hace dano, sino, por el contrario, a experimentario para liberarse asi de los comportamientos simbolicos resultantes y de la tension que les acompana. Revivir una de esas escenas olvidadas es lo que Janov llama hacer un primal.
(Page 95):
Necesariamente, tambien se revive el sufrimiento que habia sido conjurado mediante un comportamiento simbolico. De ahi, el famoso grito primal, que puede ir desde el gemido, con llanto y lagrimas, hasta un verdadero alarido de agonia cuando se revive la ascena primal mayor.
En la fase inicial, el tratamiento es individual, bajo la direccion de un terapeuta profesional. Despues de algunos meses, los pacientes pueden ayudarse mutuamente. Los mas aguerridos alcanzan sus primales sin ayuda ninguna. Poco a poco, los primales se espacian y el paciente comienza a vivir una nueva vida. Se ha hecho real. Se acabaron las drogas, el alcohol, los medicamentos, las depresiones, las pesadillas, el insominio.
En una epoca en la que muchas personas no se sienten a gusto consigo mismo y viven con un malestar continuo a rastras, el Instituto Primal, fundado en Los Angeles en 1970, acogio a clientes acaudalados, algunos de ellos muy conocidos. Luego, Janov abrio otro centro en Nueva York. Pero su rentabilidad, sin embargo, no correspondia a sus deseos.
En 1982, en parte por motivos economicos u en parte por presiones de segunda mujer, de nacionalidad francesa, Janov inaugura el Instituto Primal Europeo, cuyas puertas se han cerrado hace pocos meses en Paris, Como ya hemos visto. Los pacientes muchos de ellos con el tratamiento a medias, recibieron una carta del maestro en la que, entre otras cosas, expresaba que “ya no puendo vivir mas en medio del dolor y la miseria; despues de treinta y cinco anos viendo pacientes, ya es hora de que viva mi propia vida”. Quizas, ademas del cansancio, influyera la competencia, cada vez mas numerosa y a precios mucho mas asequibles que los de la terapia primal, de otros psicologos que retomaban, bajo una forma a menudo simplista, la idea freudiana de una reactivacion de los recuerdos que duermen en el inconsciente.
(DIANETICS EXCERPT EXCISED)
Sin duda, hay una gran distancia entre la terapia primal, cuyo inventor es un psicoterapeuta que se expresa con un lenguaje de estructura cientifica, y la charlataneria primaria de la dianetica. Pero las semejanzas no dejan de ser llamativas.
Una y otra retoman, caricaturizandolo, el tema freudiano de la curacion de las neurosis mediante la actualizacion de los traumas infantiles reprimidos en el inconsciente. A lo que anaden la idea, siempre seductora para la imaginacion, de que algunas de estas experiencias nos remontarian hasta la vida intrauteruna o incluso mas lejos.
Quiere esto decir que hay que rechazar la terapia primal, como la dianetica, catalogandolas ambas en el apartado de las medicinas de las que solo sus explotadores, de buena o mala fe, podran sacar provecho? La repuesta no es, probablemente, simple. Porque, para empezar, es preciso no confundir dos problemas: la eficacia de un metodo terapeutico y la validez del edificio teorico en el que pretende basarse. Lo que resulta particulamente cierto en el campo de los trastornos mentales, en donde el efecto placebo, la sugestion, la calidad de la relacion medico-enfermo tienen aun mas importancia que en otras terapias.
En el plano teorico, la doctrina primal se sostiene dificilmente. Procede de una filosofia ingenua, a lo Jean Jacques Rousseau. El ser humano naceria naturalmente sano y equilibrido (“real”); solo la presion familiar y social le obligarian a refugiarse en comportamientos neuroticos. Ni la observacion cotidiana ni los conocimientos actuales sobre la psicologia del nino apoyan tales asertos, en la medida en que pretende ser universal y valida para todas los casos.
Ciertemente, las carencias afectivas pueden engendrar neurosis. Pero los ejemplos que utiliza Janov son, con frecuencia, futiles e incluso ridiculos. Pretender que un adulto se comporta de forma demasiado autoritaria o cae en el alcoholismo porque su madre le desteto demasiado pronto y luego le enseno a andar, a ser limpio y a dar las gracias, entra mas en el campo de la fantasmada que del conocimiento cientifico. En cierto modo, ello equivale a decir que toda integracion del joven ser humano en el medio cultural en donde ha nacido es nesfasta. Los unicos sujetos reales serian entonces los ninos-lobo que crecieran en el bosque fuera de la sociedad humana. Los pocos casos conocidos muestran, por el contrario, un retraso psiquico practicamente irremediable. A la inversa, los adultos en nuestras sociedades contemporaneas deberian ser practicamente todos neuroticos. Muchos de los escritos de Janov se acercan a esa vision pesimista se la sociedad humana actual.
Un rasgo comun a muchas teorias aventureras es el hecho de que a una misma causa remiten tanto un efecto como su contrario. En la teoria primal, el carino testimoniado a un nino por un vecino o un maestro puede resultarle benefico, pero tambien puede resultar nocivo si el nino compara este comportamiento al menos afectuoso de sus padres.
De modo que la teoria siempre tiene razon. El terapeuta encontrara siempre en su paciente tantos primales como sean necesarios para explicar su neurosis. La autoridad que gana sobre su cliente ayudara a este ultimo a encontrar los recuerdos que encajan en la teoria.
Otro aspecto notable de la teoria primal es que afirma ser la unica eficaz. Lo que no deja de recordar a las sectas que se proclaman detentadoras exclusivas de la verdad. “Casi un siglo de psicoterapia –escribe Janov- ha transcurrido sin que adelantemos realmente nada el el terreno de la enfermedad mental… Hay que comprender que los metodos chapuceros empleados hasta hoy para derribar un sistema irreal no son eficaces ni lo han sido nunca realmente.”
El “sistema irreal” es evidentemente el conjunto de necesidades de sustitucion que, segun Janov, determinan el comportamiento neurotico. En cuanto a los “metodos chapuceros”, son todos los de los psicoterapeutas que le han precedido y los de los contempraneos que no suscriben competamente sus puntos de vista. Esta pretension desmesurada pone en peligro la reputacion de Janov fuera del circulo de los creyentes en la teoria primal. Porque, al margen de sus extravagancias y de su explotacion mercantil, se considera que en sus escritos hay ideas interesantes y descripciones clinicas notables, incluso si no se esta de acuerdo con la interpretacion que el ofrece.
Su metodo cultiva peligrosamente el ego de sujetos caracteriales, y amenaza tambien, por su pretension de eficacia universal, con alejar a ciertos pacientes de tratamientos mas adecuados a sus casos. Pero para ciertos enfermos, la practica del grito sin retencion, solo o en grupo, puede ser benefica, se le considere o no un grito primal.
Por ello, mas alla del desagradable episodio de la clausura brutal se los centros que la practicaban, conviene situar esta teoria en la constelacion mas amplia de todo lo hoy se llama las “nuevas terapias”.
La psiquiatria clasica era considerada una rama, como otra cualquiera, de la medicina, con enfermedades mentales tan bien etiquetadas como las puramente fisicas. Y, ademas, con el poder temible otorgado al medico de decidir eventualmente que el enfermo debe ser encerrado.
Pero la nosografia –la clasificacion de las enfermedades- fue manipulada multiples veces al gusto de las teorias psiquiatricas. El psicoanalisis afirmo que la enfermedad mental no es una enfermedad como las otras. En los decenios siguientes a la ultima guerra mundial, un movimiento nacido en Gran Bretana se intitulo “antipsiquiatria”: sus promotores condenaban todo encierro y todo cuidado especifico. La locura, para ellos, no era una enfermedad del sujeto, sino una conducta util que le permite liberarse de los conflictos afectivos que sufre. En 1965 se abrieron diversos centros de acogida en donde los enfernos mentales entraban y salian libremente, prosiguiendo su delirio en psicodramas en los que participaban todos los residentes.
Hace algunos anos, las autoridades italianas decideron la supresion total de los hospitales psiquiatricos, pero luego se echaron atras en su decision. En Francia y en Espana se lanzo una politica de sectorializacion de la psiquiatria, que trata de evitar la hospitalizacion a favor de los cuidados a domicilio.
La evolucion de la sociedad removio el campo de la psiquiatria, multiplicando terapias, cuyos practicantes no sempre son medicos. Los problemas de la pareja, las relaciones padres-hijos, la reivindicacion creciente no solo del derecho a la salud sino del derecho al placer, hacen intervenir a personajes muy diversos, como los consejeros conyugales, los psicologos o los sociologos.
La psicoterapia se esta convirtiendo ya en un habito
En los Estados Unidos, la psicoterapia forma parte de las costumbres. Las estadisticas demuestran que todo americano ha sido tratado personalmente en algun momento de su vida o es amigo o pariente de alguien que ha seguido un tratamiento psicoterapeutico.
Como otras modas esta tambien ha cruzado el Atlantico. Una obra colectiva publicada bajo la direccion de Richard Meyer trata de ordenar un poco el conjunto heterogeneo de las nuevas terapias. Entre otras, se citan la getalt-terapia, que utiliza a la vez la entrevista individual y las tecnicas de grupo; la bio energia, que persigue la expresion de los sentimientos y de los deseos inhibidos mediante ejercicios respiratorios y el contacto fisico con el paciente; el analisis transaccional, que quiere crear relaciones interpersonales equilibrantes.
Hay muchas otras; simples reediciones de la buena y la vieja hipnosis, el grito primal, los cajones de aislamiento sensorial e, incluso, la dianetica o las terapias que se remiten a las misticas orientales. El principal rasgo comun a la mayoria de esta practicas es la pobreza de su fundamento cientifico.
Mientras tanto, mas de un especialista deplora que estas innovaciones alimenten el sensacionalismo de los medios de comunicacion. Y se cuestiona, una vez mas, la licitud de la difusion de metodos curativos, fisicos o mentales, con muy escaso fundamento cientifico. El reciente caso del polemico doctor Rosado en Espana no es, desgraciadamente, el unico. La ciencia, sin duda, debe someter las declaraciones audaces y generosas de los pioneros a la siempre saludable prueba de la controversia cientifica, antes de librarlas a un publico no iniciado. Lo cual no va en detrimento de la libertad de dicho publico, sino que, ante todo, intenta evitarle danos mas serios, en lo economico y en lo santario.
M. Rouze
Conocer, Jan 1986, Number 36. (pp 92-97)
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Here is an approximate English translation of text above. It was done with google translator- with only some preliminary editing having been done by a bilingual who has no bias or expertise in primal therapy. The translation below has not yet been thoroughly checked:
Conocer, Jan 1986, Number 36.
(Page 92):
PSYCHOLOGY
Scream and be cured!
So could summarize the thrust of “primal theory,” which aims to heal the neurotic, by making them relive the suffering of their childhood. And while the father of the idea, who is of American nationality, has just closed its “Institute,” many psychiatrists are fascinated by such therapies.
(Page 93):
UNTIL last August, passers by heard indiscreet sounds from a quiet hotel on the Parisian avenue Marechal Foch – sobs and cries of pain frequently could be heard – sometimes even authentic shouts. However, inside the house they were not torturing anyone, at least in the usual sense of the term – that is, against their will. Despite being in the same building, it had nothing to do with the Gestapo (page 94) who occupied the building more than forty years earlier.
The passers by heard shouts by patients who were trying to heal their neurosis that had affected their lives since childhood, but until then no treatment had been able to cure. The building was the headquarters of the European Primal Institute (EPI), founded and led by the American psychotherapist Arthur Janov.
Janov has claimed ownership of primal therapy in the institutes he founded since the publication of his first book (The Primal Scream) in the United States fifteen years ago. However, it is the case now that the central Paris headquarters has just closed, without prior notice, permanently. Apparently, the reason was emotional and physical exhaustion of its founder; but this has not prevented the proliferation of young psychotherapists who offer their services with similar therapies in the United States and France, but also in other European countries and in Japan
And, after all this, what is primal therapy exactly? It is held by its discoverer and his followers as a revolution in the treatment of neurosis and even psychosis.
This reference should, first and foremost, state that the adjective “primal” is not found in Spanish, in English it corresponds to “original, fundamental.” According to Janovians, all came into the world with our infantile primal needs: to be fed, sheltered and be protected, to grow and develop according to our own pace, to be hugged in the arms and petted, and to be encouraged.
If these basic needs are not met, or are only partially met, the child suffers. To survive, it must repress the suffering out of consciousness. However, the needs do not disappear by this act of inhibition and sooner or later these needs reappear in symbolic form. One example, perhaps is when a child is weaned too early, very soon he will not feel the need to suck anymore, but, once he becomes an adult, he may smoke nonstop, sucking eagerly while smoking.
Of course, the neurosis does not fully appear when child suppresses their needs for the first time. But the process starts at that time, and through accumulation, leads to neurosis; it is because the child lives in an environment where they do not only have to meet their needs, but they also have to meet the needs of their parents. Janov not only evokes the painful condition of children who are abused, humiliated, deprived of all love, or cases that belong to the courts, as the martyred children or victims of sexual assault. The child also suffers, according to Janov, when he is compelled to smile, or to appear happy when he is taught to wave “goodbye,” or to say “thank you,” or “please,” or when it is prevented from being too noisy or too talkative, and later, when he is asked to have good grades at school, etcetera.
Neurosis, based on the “Major Primal Scene”
The child suffers, always according Janov, because each time it is impossible to be both real and beloved, the child is becoming more unreal and neurotic. And there comes a day where an event tilts the balance in favor of the unreality and neurosis. An events which Janov calls the major primal scene.
The way the neuroses is manifested depends on the weak points of each individual. It can manifest in the form of organic disorders (mainly digestive) psychosomatic nature of the search, or uncontrolled symbolic satisfactions to replace the real need, the patient can know the real satisfactions which once resigned. Accordingly, these cases will be converted to always seek new sexual adventures, or be authoritarian and tyrannical, or it will lead to stress, or to repress to his own children in the same way that he was repressed.
Thus, the neurosis is transmitted from generation to generation. There can be no resolution by the satisfaction of the neurotic needs, because these are only symbolic substitutes for real unmet needs. Therefore, the neurotic is sentenced to live in a permanent state of tension.
The technique of primal therapy relies on this theoretical construction. The patient is encouraged to immerse himself in the past, going to meet the traumatic scenes that pushed him to abandon his real self, or to those memories that lie hidden in the unconscious. He may want to avoid and not face the trauma, but on the contrary, the experience will liberate the symbolic behavior and the resulting tension that accompanies it. Reliving one of those forgotten scenes is what Janov calls having a primal.
(Page 95):
It is necessary that he will relive the suffering that had been acted out through symbolic behavior. From there, the famous primal scream occurs, which can range from groaning with cries and tears, to a real yell of agony when he relives the major primal scene.
In the initial phase, the treatment is individual, under the direction of a professional therapist. After several months, patients can help each other. The most advanced reach their relivings without any help. Gradually, the primals are spaced and the patient begins to live a new life. The patient has become real, and now lives without alcohol, drugs, depression, nightmares, and insomnia.
At a time in which many people did not feel at ease with itself and lived with a malaise, the Primal Institute, founded in Los Angeles in 1970, welcomed wealthy clients, some of them well known. Then Janov opened another facility in New York. But its profitability, however, did not correspond to their wishes.
In 1982, partly for economic reasons ,or in part by pressure from his second wife, a French national, Janov opened the European Primal Institute in Paris, whose doors have now been closed for a few months, as has already been mentioned. Patients, many of them with their treatment half finished, received a letter from Janov in which, among other things, stated that “I can no longer live in the midst of so much pain and misery; after thirty-five years of seeing patients, and it is time to live my own life.” Maybe, as well as fatigue, it was affected by increasing competition from other treatments with more affordable prices than those of primal therapy, or affected by other psychologists who say the Freudian idea of a reactivation of memories dormant in the unconscious is simplistic.
With a book entitled “Dianetics, modern science of mental health.” According to this book, psychological disorders are caused by engrams in our unconscious, the caller spirit reaction when, for the reason that is, the spirit is momentarily analytical inhibited. These engrams left in reserve accumulation and is the cause of psychosis, neurosis and numerous organic disorders. In addition, there are engrams more dangerous and occur even before birth, during fetal life.
Simply that the expectant mother estomude or to make an exercise that compress the baby (especially if you make sexual activity, which should be avoided throughout pregnancy) for the reaction of the child to register an engram that, later, he caused serious trouble. Then it will be necessary to cure, you have go back in your memory to remember the incriminating fact.
Sitting behind his client, Hubbard puts him in a state of “dream (or hypnosis) dianetics.” As you are recalling the old experiences, hidden in the reaction, the patient weakens the power of engrams, which eventually disappear as such, be passed because of the bank reaction to the memory flow, which belongs to the conscious mind.
The priest ends when the patient reaches his first engram: then the rest are erased completely. The patient has been “cleared.” That first engram usually goes back to the first weeks of fetal life. (page 96) Sometimes even dated back to conception, the moment when sperm penetrates the ovum (?).
With the numerous customers who “cleared” at a good price, Hubbard formed disciples who applied the techniques. For less than 100 dollars (15000 pesetas) away clients referred to a device called electropsychometer, which gives “the relative degrees of dynamic tension psychophysics at regular intervals” during dianetic sessions.
Hubbard disappeared in 1982, leaving a fortune of several million dollars, which was competed for by his children and various organizations that self-proclaimed themselves as heir’s to dianetics.
Undoubtedly, there is a wide gap between the primal therapy, whose inventor is a psychotherapist who speaks with a language of scientific structure, and the primary dianetic charlatanism. But the similarities do not cease to be striking.
Both resumed, with false caricaturization, the subject of the healing of Freudian neuroses through updates to childhood trauma repressed in the unconscious. To which add the idea that is always seductive to the imagination: that some of these experiences allow us to repair intrauterine life, or even further down the road.
This means that we must reject the primal therapy, as dianetics, falsely cataloging both in the section of medicine as only their exploiters do, in good or bad faith, so that they may take advantage? The answer is, probably simple. Because, first of all, we must not confuse two issues: the efficacy of a therapeutic method and validity of the building in which aims theorectical bararse. What is particularly true in the field of mental health, where the placebo effect, the suggestion, the quality of physician-patient relationship is even more important than in other therapies.
In terms teorico, doctrine primal argues difficult. It comes from a naive philosophy, as Jean Jacques Rousseau. Human beings naturally born healthy and balanced ( “real”); single family and social pressure force him to take refuge in neurotic behavior. Neither the comment nor daily current knowledge about the psychology of such assertions l child support, insofar as it purports to be universal and apply to all cases.
Certainly, the poor can engender emotional neuroses. But the examples he uses Janov are often futile and even ridiculous. To claim that an adult behaves too authoritarian or falls into alcoholism because her mother was desteto too early and then pulled him to walk, to be clean and to thank, falls more in the field of fantasmada that of knowledge. In a way, this is equivalent to saying that any integration of the young people at the cultural milieu where he was born nefarious. The unique real subject would then wolf-children who grow up in the woods outside of human society. The few known cases show, on the other hand, a delay Moral practically hopeless. Conversely, adults in our contemporary societies should be practically all neurotic. Many of the writings of Janov come close to that vision is pessimistic human society today.
A feature common to many theories adventure is the fact that refer to the same cause as much a fact as it’s opposite. In theory primal, carino testified to a child by a neighbor or a teacher can find benefico, but also can be harmful if the child compares this behavior at least loving their parents.
So the theory always has reason. The therapist always found his patient as many yearlings are necessary to explain their neuroses. The authority earns on its customer help the latter to find the memories that fit the theory.
Another notable aspect of the theory is that primal claims to be the only effective. What remains to remind the sects that are proclaimed female holds exclusive truth. “Nearly a century of psychotherapy-writes-Janov has elapsed without forward really nothing on the ground of mental illness … You have to understand that the methods employed chapuceros until today to tear down a system unreal are not effective or have never really been.”
The system unreal “(page 97): obviously a whole needs replacement, according Janov, determine the neurotic behavior. As for the “methods chapuceros” are all of the psychotherapists who have preceded him in the contemporary-that do not subscribe to their views. This pretension inordinate endangers the reputation of Janov outside the circle of believers in the theory primal. Because, aside from its extravagance and its explotacion commercial, it is considered that in his writings there are interesting ideas and descriptions clinics remarkable, even if it is not interpreted that the offers.
His method grown dangerously caracteriales the ego of subjects, and also threatened by its pretension efficacy universal, with some patients away from treatments more suited to their cases. But for some patients, the practice of withholding without cry, alone or in groups, can be beneficial, it considers whether or not a primal scream.
Therefore, beyond the unpleasant episode in the brutal closing those centers is practiced, should put this theory in the broader constellation of everything today is called the “new therapies.”
The classical psychiatry was considered a branch, like any other, medicine, mental illness as well as those labeled purely physical. And besides, with the fearsome power granted to the doctor eventually deciding that the patient needs to be locked up.
But nosography – the classification of diseases- was changed a multiple of times according to psychiatric theories. Psychoanalysis says that mental illness is not a disease like physical diseases. In the decades after the last world war, a movement born in Britain was entitled “anti-psychiatry” and its promoters condemning all locked and carefully specified. For them, madness was not a disease of the patient, but a useful behavior that lets you break free of conflict and emotional suffering. In 1965 they opened several shelters where the mentally ill and emerging fell freely, continuing their delirium in psychodrama projects involving all residents.
In recent years, Italian authorities decided on the total abolition of psychiatric hospitals, but then threw back at its decision. In France and Spain was launched a policy sectorializacion of psychiatry, which seeks to avoid hospitalization for care at home.
The evolution of the company removed the field of psychiatry, multiplying therapies, whose practitioners are not always medical. The problems of the partner, parent-child relations, the growing claim that they not only had the right to health but also the right to pleasure, they speak in very different characters, such as marital counselors, psychologists or sociologists.
The psychotherapy that is being converted into a habit
In the United States, psychotherapy is part of the culture. The statistics show that every American has been treated personally at some point in their life; or has a friend or relative of someone who has undergone psychotherapy treatment.
There are many others; simple reissues of good and old hypnosis, the primal scream, the drawers of sensory deprivation, and even Dianetics or therapies which are connected to the mystical East. The main feature common to most of this practice is the poverty of its scientific foundation.
Meanwhile, more of a specialist regrets that these innovations fed sensationalism of the media. And called into question once more, the legality of the distribution methods of healing, physical or mental, with very little scientific basis. The recent case of the controversial doctor Rosado in Spain is not, unfortunately, the only. Should science and certainly submit statements that are bold and generous? Should the pioneers always provide healthy scientific proof of the dispute before the public is free to begin or not. However, that does not detract from the freedom of the public, first and foremost, to try to avoid more serious damage to both one’s finances and health.
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