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For those who are not aware, John Lennon did primal therapy with Arthur Janov in 1970, at first at Lennon’s home in England, and then in Los Angeles. Yoko Ono did primal therapy with Vivian Janov at the same time.
Although I am a fan of John Lennon, especially of his music and anti-war protests, it is important to ask a few questions about whether Janov’s claims of “Post-Primal” people is born out by the evidence. When you add the time in England and LA did Lennon get the equivalent of more than the recommended 8 months of therapy that was promised in The Primal Scream to be average? He got a lot of exclusive therapy time with Janov himself when both Janovs travelled to John’s home in England. Shouldn’t that mean he would be a model case, since he got Janov rather than an assistant? Did he get better? Did his music or words after primal therapy include any personal attacks towards others?
In any event, here are some sources and quotations that call some of Janov’s claims about post-primal people in to question:
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Rolling Stone magazine, 2005
Here are some excerpts from “Lennon Lives Forever,” written by Mikal Gilmore in Rolling Stone magazine, 12/15/2005, Issue 989:
“[In 1970] He had been active in Los Angeles in an experimental form of treatment, primal therapy, authored by psychologist Arthur Janov…
John…in 1970, … severed his relationship with Alfred [his father]…
Lennon had also forsaken his first son, Julian, during his years with the Beatles, and only spoke with him sporadically since his divorce from Cynthia…
Spector produced … Lennon’s lyrics still chased troubling themes — his hatred of deceitful political leaders, jealous insecurities in his marriage, a bitter disdain for his former song-writing partner (he loved beating up on McCartney)…
In October 1973, he and Ono separated, after four years of marriage… his and Ono’s secretary, May Pang, who became his lover…
Lennon fell apart. He behaved horribly in public, and he smashed up a friend’s house where he was staying. Nilsson later recalled Lennon crying while drunk at night, wondering what he had done wrong. …
Lennon’s depression and bravado ran alongside each other in his 1974 Walls and Bridges…
Lennon and Ono also became adherents of destiny systems like astrology and numerology, basing major decisions — including business, travel and relationships — on how the stars or the numbers looked.”
“Lennon Lives Forever.” Gilmore, Mikal, Rolling Stone magazine, 12/15/2005, Issue 989
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The Dick Cavett Show, 1971
Here is an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the Dick Cavett Show, September 11, 1971, where John and Yoko are smoking throughout the interview. John says, looking at the camera:
“Didn’t work Janov. Didn’t work, Arthur. Just talking to Janov”
See it on YouTube: John Lennon on the Dick Cavett Show September 11, 1971 (John mentions Janov shortly after 3 minutes into the video).
The interview may be found on this DVD:
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MORE ON JOHN LENNON AND PRIMAL THERAPY
By D of pillsworld.blogspot.com, who quotes from two different books on John Lennon:
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The Love You Make: An insider’s story of The Beatles.
by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines.
First published in Britain in 1983 by Macmillan London Ltd. Available at http://www.amazon.com/Love-You-Make-Insiders-Beatles/dp/007008159X.
About the authors:
Peter Brown worked as a manager in the Epstein family business, in Liverpool, before Brian Epstein discovered The Beatles. Later, he became part of the Beatles’ management team and served as Executive Director of Apple Corp., the Beatles’ financial organization. He was best man (and the only guest) at John & Yoko’s marriage ceremony in Gibraltar. After the group broke up, Peter Brown accepted a job with a music business management agency in New York. He took an apartment overlooking Central Park. When John & Yoko visited him there they liked the view so much they wanted one like it, and they found an apartment nearby in Dakota Mansions, where Lennon was later shot. Co-author Steven Gaines is a music industry biographer and journalist.
The section of the book about primal therapy spans pages 326-330. The following quote spans pages 328-329 (in the paperback edition).
Peter Brown writes: “For nearly three months they spent two half days a week in therapy with Janov.” Unlike other patients, many of whom had to stay in seedy lodgings, John and Yoko rented a house with a swimming pool in Beverley Hills. Peter Brown goes on to write:
“Yoko didn’t buy Janov’s therapy at all. John later claimed that she only went along with it from the start to satisfy him, that in her heart she felt John was only searching for another “Daddy”. But she also thought the therapy was useful for men who needed to be able to cry and release themselves. This form of expression was quite familiar to Yoko, who would not only scream and cry in her private life, but perform it on records and the stage.
There came a moment of disillusionment with Janov. According to John, one day Janov appeared at a therapy session with two 16mm cameras. John wouldn’t even consider having his session recorded. ‘I’m not going to be filmed,’ John said, ‘especially not rolling around on the floor screaming.’
According to John, Janov started to berate them. ‘Some people are so big they won’t be filmed,’ Janov said. Janov said that it was coincidental that he was filming the session, and it had nothing to do with John and Yoko’s fame. ‘Who are you kidding, Mr. Janov?’ John said. ‘[You] just happen to be filming the session with John and Yoko in it.’”
The author has lots of praise for the so-called “primal” album, Plastic Ono Band, but it’s clear from the events which happened later that the beneficial effects of primal therapy didn’t last. According to Peter Brown, by 1972 John Lennon had become addicted to heroin or methadone. (He couldn’t confirm which it was: see page 327). In 1973 John Lennon separated from Yoko for more than a year and lived in Los Angeles, a period that the mass media portrayed as an alcoholic haze marked by bizarre antics in public places. On page 375 Peter Brown writes:
“John used to refer to this nightmarish period in LA as his ‘Lost Weekend’. ‘My goal was to obliterate the mind so that I wouldn’t be conscious,’ John said later. ‘I think I was maybe suicidal on some kind of subconscious level.’ Indeed, it was probably the closest John ever came to suicide in a real sense. The prodigious quantities of alcohol alone – there are stories of John’s polishing off fifths of Rémy Martin in one sitting – were enough to kill the average man, to say nothing of the increased danger of mixing the booze with his usual assortment of drugs, plus an LA speciality, coke [cocaine].”
The Love You Make: An insider’s story of The Beatles.(1983). By Peter Brown and Steven Gaines. Macmillan London Ltd.
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John
By Cynthia Lennon
Julian Lennon wrote a Foreword for his mother’s book, John. First published by Hodder & Stoughton, London, in 2005. The book is available here: John by Cynthia Lennon at Amazon.co.uk .
Foreword by Julian Lennon.
“Growing up as John Lennon’s son has been a rocky path. All my life I’ve had people coming up to me saying, ‘I loved your Dad.’ I always have very mixed feelings when I hear this. I know that Dad was an idol to millions who grew up loving his music and his ideals. But to me he wasn’t a musician or a peace icon, he was the father I loved and who let me down in so many ways. After the age of five, when my parents separated, I saw him only a handful of times, and when I did he was often remote and intimidating. I grew up longing for more contact with him but felt rejected and unimportant in his life.
Dad was a great talent, a remarkable man who stood for peace and love in the world. But at the same time he found it very hard to show any peace and love to his first family – my mother and me. In many accounts of Dad’s life Mum and I are either dismissed, or at best treated as insignificant bit players in his life, which sadly is something that continues to this day. Yet Mum was his first real love and she was with him for half his adult life, from art college, to the genesis of the Beatles, to their overwhelming worldwide success. That’s why I’m so happy that she’s decided to write her side of the story. For far too long now Mum has put up with being relegated to a puff of smoke in Dad’s life and that simply is not the truth. Now it’s time to set the record straight. There’s so much that has never been said, so many tales that have never been told. If there is to be a balanced picture of Dad’s life, then Mum’s side of the story is long overdue.
I’m immensely proud of her. She’s always been there for me; she was the one who kept it all together, taught me what matters in life and stayed strong when our world was crumbling. While Dad was fast becoming one of the wealthiest men in his field, Mum and I had very little and she was going out to work to support us. Mum has always acted with dignity and I have her to thank for who I am. I love her honesty and her courage, and I know it’s taken a great deal of both for her to write her story.
That’s why I offer her my full support and I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the truth, the real truth about Dad’s life.”
- 2005
A version of this Foreword has been published online by the respected British newspaper, The Sunday Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article565023.ece
Later in this same book, John, Cynthia Lennon goes on to describe how nine years after primal therapy, in the spring of 1979, John Lennon invited Julian to the United States for his sixteenth birthday, in the Easter holidays. Cynthia Lennon wrote about what happened (page 356 in the paperback edition):
“John’s erratic behaviour around Julian continued – fun one moment and violent anger the next. And he could be like this with Sean too, reducing the little boy to tears of terror. Fred Seaman, or sometimes Yoko, would act as a buffer when John lost his temper. Julian was constantly on tenterhooks, sensing that an eruption was coming and retreating to his room in the hope of avoiding it.
One incident in particular did him lasting damage. The whole family had been having fun, making Mickey Mouse pancakes and fooling around, when Julian giggled. John turned on him and screamed, ‘I can’t stand the way you fucking laugh! Never let me hear your fucking horrible laugh again.’
He continued with a tirade of abuse until Julian fled once again to his room in tears. It was monstrously cruel and has affected him ever since. To this day he seldom laughs.”
John, (2005), by Cynthia Lennon, Hodder & Stoughton, London.
See also by D from pillsworld.blogspot.com:
http://pillsworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/julian-john-lennon.html
http://pillsworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/john-lennon-primal-therapy.html ]
Also, check out this related interesting interview: Julian Lennon Talks about his father on YouTube.
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