Debunking Primal Therapy

A friendly heads up about primal therapy and other repressed memory therapies

• Home
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Is Primal Therapy Science?
• 3 Falsifiability – Is Primal Therapy Testable?
• 4 Peer Review & Replication
• 5 The Problem of Vivid Testimonials
• A Challenge to Primal Therapy: Independant Clinical Trial
• A Primal Therapy Primer for Those Unfamiliar
• A Revealing Interview with a Former Primal Therapist Trainee
• About The Website Editor
• An Article by a Janov-Trained Primal Therapist 1991
• Articles with Weblinks Exposing Primal Therapy p. 1
  • Articles with Weblinks Exposing Primal Therapy p. 2
  • Articles with Weblinks Exposing Primal Therapy p. 3
  • Articles with Weblinks Exposing Primal Therapy p. 4
• Books Revealing Problems with Primal Therapy
  • 111 Common Therapeutic Blunders 2005 Schoenewolf
  • American Therapy 2008 Engel
  • Catharsis in Psychotherapy 1977 Nichols
  • Crazy Therapies 1996 Singer Lalich
  • Death of Psychotherapy 2000 Eisner
  • Lets Talk About Me 1981 Clare
  • New Age Blues 1979 Rossman
  • Popular Psychology 2005 Cordon
  • Psychobabble 1977 Rosen
  • Psychological Society 1979 Gross
  • Victims of Memory 1996 Pendergrast
  • Wood (2008) Therapy 101: Famously Failed Therapies – 3. Primal Therapy
• Confirmation and Other Biases Explain Primal Theory Development
• Conocer Article: Scream and be Cured!
• Did Primal Therapy Work for Cohorts? Observations of Janov’s Miracle Cure
• Does Evidence from Clinical Psychology Support Primal Therapy?
• Does Evidence from Developmental Psychology Support Primal Therapy?
• Ethics: Relevant Excerpts from the APA Ethics Code
• False Recovered Memories and the Myth of Repression
• Gardner 2003 Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries
• Good Cause Associations Distracts Focus Away from Evidence
• Groupthink and Group Conformity
• How to Avoid Jumping From the Pseudoscience Frying Pan into the Fire
• How To Complain
• Humor: Baseball Bat and Spit Therapy: the cure for humanity
• Is Janov Really One of the World’s Leading Psychologists?
• Is Primal Therapy a Cult?
• Is Primal Therapy Authoritarian?
• Is Primal Therapy or Theory Iatrogenic?
• Is Primal Therapy Really the Only Hope?
• Janov’s Errors About the Evolution of Feelings and Pain
• Legal Precedents
• Let’s Check Some of the Science
• Peer Reviewed
  • Norcross, Koocher, and Garafalo, 2006. Discredited Psychological Treatments
• Personal Attacks in the Guise of Breaking Defences in Primal Therapy
• Primal Therapy Book Reviews
• Recommended Books for Recovery from Primal
• Self Justification Explains Primal Therapy Testimonials
• The Danger of Using Primal Theory to Make Medication Decisions
• The Intellectual Abuse in Primal Therapy Literature
• The Post-Primal John Lennon
• The Scientific Revolution Claim
• The Stupidity of the Real vs Unreal Rhetoric
• The Stupidity of Trying to Relive Birth Trauma
• The Three Levels Of Belief
• The UCLA “Experiment”
• Verification
• Warning
• Your Stories and Comments 1
• Your Stories and Comments 2
• Your Stories and Comments 3
• Your Stories and Comments 4
• 2011: The Four Incorrect Assumptions of Primal Therapy