American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States
by Jonathan Engel (Gothan Publishers 2008).
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Exerpt from pages 179 to 180:
Weirder than the encounter groups and the relaxation therapies were those therapies that could be generally defined as “recapture” therapies. Derivative of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics, which grew in popularity through the 1950s and 1960s, these therapies included primal scream, Z-therapy, past-lives therapy, and rebirthing therapy. All aimed to help clients and patients recapture lost memories, relive past traumas, face repressed memories, and admit to base truths of their own histories. The aggressiveness of their approaches, however, coupled with therapeutic rigidity and often poorly trained and unempathetic practitioners, could lead to bizarre and even tragic outcomes.
Hubbard’s Dianetics…proposed the existence of “engrams” (stored impressions in the mind), which could be recalled through lengthy “auditing” procedures that practitioners claimed could help a patient recall or relive traumatic events from childhood, infancy, or even from within the womb. (46) One woman who had completed a successful audit with her husband described the experience thus: “My husband took me back to what I believe was the prenatal period of my life. I began to feel as if I were drowning. I brought up phlegm…and my eyes were running. I almost choked and began grasping for breath. Apparently my head was twisted to one side of my mother’s womb. The pain was intense.” (47) The woman, who had been plagued with illness throughout her adult life, was confident that she was now cured. “I believe it with all my heart,” she said.
Dianetics gave rise to Arthur Janov’s primal scream therapy of the 1970s, which used Dianetic-like audits combined with screaming to return patients to traumatic infantile events and help rid them of repressed psychic demons. A fringe movement confined almost exclusively to wealthy people in coastal California, primal scream gained some notoriety when ex-Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko endorsed the technique and sang about it on their album Plastic Ono Band. Elevating the “crybaby” to a new sort of cultural icom, primal scream was truly bizarre. The therapy encouraged patients to wear diapers, suck their thumb, crying, and looking at an infant photo of herself while saying, “Daddy, don’t hurt me, Daddy, please love me.” (48)
Notes:
46. For an excellent early description of Dianetics, see “After Hours,” Harper’s Magazine, January 1951, pp. 101-103.
47. “Of Two Minds,” p.65.
48. “The Primal Screamer,” Newsweek, 4/12/71.
