Critical_Websites/Articles 2
Critical Articles and Websites on Primal Therapy – 2
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“Former psychologist says profession is self-serving,”
“On the Couch” by Carol Milstone, PhD
National Post 06/25/2001
Excerpt from http://tanadineen.com/media/NatPostMilstone.html :
“Before 1993, when [Tana Dineen] abandoned the psychology profession in protest, Dineen assumed that psychologists recognized “an obligation to scrutinize their ideas, to question assumptions, and to raise questions about socially sanctioned beliefs.”
Instead Dineen, author of the book Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry Is Doing to People, found that most therapists are just ’swept along by their own opinions and their own beliefs.’
When she was practicing psychology in the 1970s, it was fads like primal scream therapy and Gestalt therapy, while today it’s regression therapy (which she believes can cause false memories), thought field therapy (TFT), eye movement and desensitization reprocessing therapy (EMDR) and alien abduction therapy.
‘This is the kind of junk that the colleges of licensed psychologists will do nothing about,’ laments Dineen. ‘These therapists are dangerous people, and people continue to get sucked into their beliefs.’
Also disturbing, says Dineen, is the profession’s habit of convincing people whose lives are normal that somehow their lives should be more fulfilled and that psychologists can help.”
National Post article 6/25/2001 by Carol Milstone Ph.D.
http://tanadineen.com/media/NatPostMilstone.html
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Conocer
Conocer science periodical, Number 36, January 1986, pp. 93-95
(Conocer was a scientific periodical published in Spain, it was a respected popular science magazine roughly equivalent to Discover Magazine. The director of Conocer at that time was Manuel Toharia, a respected Spanish scientist and scientific investigator, and a very active fighter against Pseudoscience.),
Selected excerpts of original text in Spanish:
”Hasta el pasado mes de agosto, los transeúntes que prestasen un oído indiscreto a los rumores procedentes de un tranquilo hotelito particular de la avenida parisiense del Maréchal Foch, podían escuchar con cierta frecuencia sollozos y gritos de dolor; a veces incluso auténticos alaridos. Sin embargo, dentro de la casa no se torturaba a nadie, al menos en el sentido usual del término, contra su voluntad. A pesar de encontrarse en el mismo lugar, aquello nada tenía que ver con el antro que la Gestapo ocupó hace más de cuarenta años…Y el edificio era la sede del Instituto Primal Europeo (IPE), fundado y dirigido por el psicoterapeuta norteamericano Arthur Janov…Aunque se da el caso, actualmente, de que la sede central de París, sin aviso previo, acaba de cerrar definitivamente. Al parecer, por agotamiento físico y psíquico de su fundador…Luego Janov abrió otro centro en Nueva York. Pero su rentabilidad, sin embargo, no correspondía a sus deseos. En 1982, en parte por motivos económicos y en parte por presiones de su segunda mujer, de nacionalidad francesa, Janov inaugura el Instituto Primal Europeo, cuyas puertas se han cerrado hace pocos meses en París, 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 puedo vivir más en medio del dolor y la miseria; después de treinta y cinco años viendo pacientes, ya es hora de que viva mi propia vida”. Quizás, además del cansancio, influyera la competencia, cada vez más numerosa y a precios mucho más asequibles que los de la terapia primal…”
Article by M. Rouzé.
Conocer, Number 36, January 1986, pp 93-95
English Translation of the above:
“Until last August, passers-by who were indiscreetly listening to sounds emanating from a quiet semi-detached house on the Avenue Marshal Foch in Paris, could frequently hear sobs, shouts of pain, and sometimes even real screams. Nevertheless, inside the house nobody was being tortured, at least not in the usual sense of the term, that is, unwillingly. In spite of being in the same place, the activities had nothing to do with the cellar having been used by the Gestapo more than 40 years earlier. []… The building was the headquarters of the European Primal Institute (IPE), founded and directed by the North American psychotherapist Arthur Janov. But now the headquarters in Paris have been closed without prior notification. This was apparently due to the physical and mental exhaustion of the founder … Janov opened another center in New York. But its profitability was not up to expectations. In 1982, partly for economic motives and partly as a result of pressure from his second wife, of French nationality, Janov opened the IPE in Paris, which has been closed for few months now, as we have seen. The patients, many of them only halfway with their treatment, received a letter from the therapist that, amongst other things, stated ” I cannot live any more in the midst of pain and the misery; after thirty five years seeing patients, it is time for me to live my own life”. Probably, besides this weariness, the decision was influenced by competition, with treatments becoming increasingly numerous, at prices more affordable than Primal therapy.”
Article by M. Rouzé.
Conocer, Number 36, January 1986, pp 93-95
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“DUBIOUS MENTAL HEALTH-RELATED METHODS SUMMARIZED,”
Excerpts from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0AYN/is_4_24/ai_n18612958 :
National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) Newsletter, Jul/Aug2001, Vol. 24, Issue 4
“In the recent double issue of Priorities for Health magazine on “Sorting Out Junk Science” [12(4);2000 and 13(1);2001], Jack Raso, MS provided brief descriptions of “Dubious Mental Health-Related Methods” such as: …, primal therapy,…” [a list of other therapies is also given]
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“Cults and More Cults:”
Excerpts from the page http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-bibliography.html :
”Arthur Janov and his Primal Scream:
The New Primal Scream: Primal Therapy After 20 Years Arthur Janov
Enterprise Publishing, Wilmington, DE, 1991.
ISBN: 0-942103-23-8
Dewey: 132 J34n
Back in the late ’sixties, Janov published his original Primal Scream, which featured patients saying things like, “Well, if I add up how much money I spend on cigarettes over a period of several years, it is many thousands of dollars. But if I give $5000 of it to Arthur instead, for him to teach me how to scream and quit smoking, I’ll be so much healthier, and I’ll actually save money. So that’s what I’ll do — I’ll give Dr. Janov $5000.”
Well, Janov managed to polish his act a little in the following 20 years, but it’s still the same old garbage. Now the back cover of this book says, ‘Scientific Research World-Wide Proves Primal Therapy May Prolong Life by Reducing Stress’.
Yep, the Baby Boomers are all middle-aged now, and trying to live forever…
Notice the broken logic:
Scientific blah-blah PROVES that Janov’s garbage MAY work.
We get an absolute certainty — “proof” — followed by a vague, uncertain, maybe.
Yes, and the discovery of the coelacanth PROVES that Nessie the Loch Ness sea monster MIGHT be real too, but it’s extremely unlikely. I’m not holding my breath.
Note that the opposite logic is equally valid:
Scientific blah-blah PROVES that Janov’s garbage MAY NOT work.”
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-bibliography.html
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James Randi Educational Foundation
website forum:
This is a discussion on whether primal therapy is pseudoscience (woo) or science.
Excerpts from this website forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=79462 :
“I’m a psychology professor who wrote a skeptical reference book (Popular Psychology: An Encyclopedia, from Greenwood Press, if anyone cares), and in that process I did some digging into just how bizarre these folks are. Here’s a very brief excerpt from my entry on Janov; note the remarkable similarities to Dianetics/Scientology: ‘Given the questionable, indeed bizarre, theoretical underpinning of primal therapy, the absence of controlled scientific evidence is unsurprising. Consider, for example, the claim that trauma associated with conception can be a major source of Pain in adulthood. Primal therapists teach that if a child is conceived through rape, the egg and sperm are imprinted with specific feelings about the incident and pass this memory along to all cells of the child’s body. This will of course cause lifelong pain and anxiety, until the patient learns (with the help of primal therapy, of course) to release those feelings. The idea that individual cells, especially gametes, actually possess either feelings or memories, and are furthermore able to pass those feelings along to all subsequent cells they produce, thus leading to psychological trauma felt by the organism as a whole, is sufficiently ludicrous, on many levels, to be undeserving of any attempt at systematic criticism other than to say that it is completely incompatible with what is known about memory and feelings, to say nothing of cellular biology.
Janov has more recently attempted (in his latest book, The Biology of Love ) to connect his ideas to more conventional knowledge in neuroscience, in the hope of gaining greater scientific legitimacy. In agreeing with neurochemists that becoming emotionally upset and screaming can cause a release of endorphins, which of course will produce a feeling of well-being, he actually harms his case more than he helps it. This phenomenon is also well-known among athletes, after all, and there is no reason to believe that the “runner’s high” is associated with the release of repressed trauma. The strenuous activity provides a complete explanation of the phenomenon.
The Primal Scream was published more than thirty years ago, and primal therapy is essentially unaltered from its earliest state—while undeniably an inventive and intriguing approach to psychotherapy, it lacks the underpinning of scientific validation which potential clients ought to be able to expect at this point in our history. ‘ “
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=79462
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National Council Against Health Fraud
(NCAHF) News, July/Aug 2001
Volume 24, Issue #4
Excerpts from http://www.ncahf.org/nl/2001/7-8.html :
“PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPIES SCRUTINIZED
A symposium in the Spring 2001 issue of The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and Aberrant Medical Practices [SRAM] on ‘Pseudoscience and Psychotherapy’ begins with brain behavior scientist Barry Beyerstein’s article ‘Fringe Psychotherapies: The Public at Risk.’ Dr. Beyerstein notes three ways that fringe therapists endanger patients: (1) through manipulation and fraud; (2) by failing to recognize early signs of serious psychopathologies; and (3) by encouraging clients’ delusions. He says practitioners of psychotherapy have drifted from the scientific-practitioner model. Contributing factors include: … the failure of professional associations to take action against peddlers of discredited services.
Beyerstein identifies several cherished assumptions of clinicians that are actually psychotherapeutic fictions. They include: … (2) ‘ “clinical judgment” is a reliable basis for deriving predictions about clients’ behavior;’ (3) ‘most psychological problems stem from trauma or maltreatment early in life’; ..
He notes problems with various approaches to psychological therapy including: … (7) therapies that encourage recall of thoughts while in utero, during birth, or in early childhood- e.g. … Primal Scream Therapy …
and from the same webpage:
“Psychotherapy Websites Critiqued
A study of the quality of information on psychotherapy at Web sites that consumers would likely find in a search for information on psychotherapy revealed that ‘the consumer of health information is exposed to a variety of unsubstantiated claims.’ …Shortcomings identified in these sites included out-of-date information, inadequate references of sources, insufficient information about methodologies of studies described, carelessness, hyperbole, intimidating statements, and self-serving statements. [Quinn, B. Assessing the quality of psychotherapy self-evaluation information on the web. Proceedings of the 22nd National Online Meeting, 2001.]“
http://www.ncahf.org/nl/2001/7-8.html
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The Scientology Sect …(Heinemann 1979)
8. Health and Immortality
“This expectation is used by all of the type of psychological healer who offers an allegedly patent recipe. For instance, there is Janov, who asserts that all defects are a result of pre-natal or infant ‘primary experiences’ which give rise to ‘primal pain,’ which can be removed by ‘primal scream therapy.’
In this context, the term ‘technology’ is often used: Janov’s technology to produce the ‘primal scream’ is supposed to be so simple that a German author refrained from describing it on a radio show because of the potential for misuse. ‘Technology’ and ’science’ are also used by Hubbard to cast his spell.(By the way, Janov – like Hubbard – has the opinion that the application of his theory can lead to a world without war or crime.) ”
The Scientology Sect (p.62), by Heineman (1979).
Website link: www.lermanet.com/cisar/germany/books/trn1046.htm
