Debunking Primal Therapy

The Biology of Love (2000)

Excerpt from Journal of Sex Research (Nov 2001):

            “… There is not enough biology and far too much psychobabble for this book to claim its title. In the introduction, Janov also introduces the reader to Primal Therapy. As the neuroanatomy of the brain is detailed for the lay audience, the focus becomes clear: Anoxia at birth and lack of love in early life probably contribute either solely or collectively to nearly every human malady. Primal Therapy is the cure.

Broad-based conclusions run rampant. For example: ‘Love produces an abundance of serotonin and other repressive brain hormones to help put down future pain’ (p. 35).

Readers are then provided with information about the frontal cortex, as they are also led to believe that early trauma and lack of love cause hyperactivity. Animal experiments are offered to support linking important evidence that a ‘mother’s condition’ during pregnancy affects her child “for a lifetime” (p. 41).

The ‘mother’s condition’ is not detailed. Most of the biological and psychological concepts presented are so vague as to allow links between anything and everything.

Then, the first case study is presented! I was surprised, and I would be equally surprised to find a case study in any other book about the biology of anything. This is not a book about biology. Apparently without thought, this case study is placed in the middle of the chapter titled, ‘The Frontal Cortex: The Thinking Man’s Brain.’ However, this placement sets the stage for further promotional efforts to bring clients into Primal Therapy. One year of primal therapy normalizes cells in the thalamus—an interesting claim. Many more case studies are incorporated in the following chapters, and are offered as examples of how Primal Therapy can help.

Moving forward, anesthetized mothers may contribute to lack of optimism, and a father’s absence is linked to male homosexuality. “(More on this later.)” writes Janov (p. 64). I could not wait, and jumped to the short  chapter “On Sexuality and Homosexuality.” After reading a surprising synopsis that misrepresented Dorner’s (1983) endocrine studies on human male homosexuals, knew it would have been better to have waited to read more about father absence, and the addition of the link between tyrannical mothers and offspring homosexuality.

It became increasingly more difficult for me to continue reading for review, as a mother’s smoking habits were linked to her child’s low libido, and circumcision ‘played a role in one homosexual’ Janov treated (he supposedly treated hundreds; p. 319). A story about a patient’s anxiety attack is attached at chapter’s end.

Jump back. Lack of touch early in life is linked to compulsive sexual activity in men and in women. In the same paragraph, too much excitement is linked to the origin of frigidity. Reading more quickly now, reviewer began focusing on such links. For example, lack of love in the first year or two of life might cause hypothalamic impairment and behavioral deficits. I to realize how difficult it would be to write a cohesive review.

Anoxia at birth was diagnosed during the therapy of many patients. Janov knows whether a patient is ‘faking during therapy. Clues are provided on how to make a realistic primal scream during Primal Therapy–the therapy of choice for nearly everything. An absent mother may cause male homosexuality, or lesbianism if a young girl feels good when another girl (mother substitute) touches her. Why wasn’t this included in the chapter on homosexuality? Reliving the birth experience may help. Without reliving the birth experience, how can one determine whether they were subjected to anoxia at birth? All these topics are very loosely connected

Advanced primal patients invariably have lower vital signs, according to a consulting physician. Janov admits that, ‘Some of what I discuss is of necessity speculation’ (p. 118). However, this statement comes after 117 pages of loose and very speculative links, and the ever-present case studies. Until this point, readers have been led to believe that there is evidence for Janov’s claims. The speculation continues.

It is claimed that after one year of Primal Therapy there is more balance between the hemispheres of the brain. Also, prison inmates are said to be on drugs before entering prison because of emotional deprivation at birth and during the first two years of life. Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s might be the late results of womb-life trauma. At least the concept of ‘critical periods’ is discussed, albeit only as a introduction to imprinting, even before birth.

I will fast-forward this review: Lack of oxygen at birth equates with lack of love, and womb trauma may be linked to some kinds of cancer, according to Janov, who also admits that his writing “does not follow prevailing psychological theories” (p. 187). Anoxia is linked to tobacco addiction later in life. Rebirthers liberate themselves during Primal Therapy. “Patients reliving a birth sequence in my sessions have even shown forceps marks on the forehead” (p. 233). What? Psychological trauma physically manifest? This is an incredible phenomenon that should be documented on film. Men’s fixation with women’s breasts may be an attempt to recuperate lost oxytocin supplies from infancy. unwanted may make children more vulnerable to schizophrenia.

The Biology of Love may attract readers who are interested in biology, but the content will repulse many who can neither follow, nor abide by, Janov’s links. Certainly, I was repulsed…”

Kohl, James V., Journal of Sex Research, 00224499, Nov 2001, Vol. 38, Issue 4        
       James V. Kohl at the time of writing was a Clinical Laboratory Scientist, Grover C. Dils Medical Center.

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Primal Therapy is a very different therapy from all other psychotherapies. This is something a potential reader must understand before embarking reading this book or doing Primal Therapy itself. One, you must understand that it involves RELIVING TRAUMATIC experiences in your past, even those that you thought were not traumatic or negative.

 

Primal Therapy postulates that human beings have left their natural environment hundreds of thousands of years ago (see Primal Man) and that this is why people are neurotic. So it is not just a new therapy, it is also a belief system and perhaps some might call it a “religion”.

 

Primal Therapy works strongly against the generally accepted psychotherapies existent today in that it claims it is the only cure for neurosis and in general all emotional, mental and psychological problems including psychosomatic problems. It doesn’t believe that the other therapeutic approaches work in fact it indicates they make a person more sick.

 

Primal Therapy requires a very large commitment of time, energy, money that can result in a change of spouses, jobs, location and friends. Arttur Janov believes that people must eventually let go of all the defenses they have built up over the years since childhood and totally commit themselves to the therapy as this is the only way to become real. Experiencing of severe pain, emotional or otherwise, is the GOAL and it is believed that this is the only way a person can overcome their neurosis. As Janov has said himself, there may be times when a person is to upset to go into work. It is a total change in the way a person lives their life with the prime goal of doing Primal Therapy.

 

Most important to understand is that Janov feels that the brain is actually structured to handle pain, that we evolved and our modern brains are structured to handle and repress Primal Pain and this is what his research is about and his therapy is about, that is, the undoing of the way the brain operates now, the returning of the brain structures to not blocking pain, but experiencing pain to allow full fluid access amongs all brain structures. Janov claims that he has done the research completely for this and this is why Primal Healing is his most important books, as it is advertised on his Primal Center website.

 

This of course suggests that Janov is a genius, a messiah, and has made discoveries much more important than Sigmund Freud. Dr. Freud was a psychiatrist and Medical Doctor studying with the most brilliant scientific men of his time. Dr. Janov, not an MD, for the most part has done no original research of his own and uses extensively the work of neuroscientists to “prove” his conclusions.

 

To totally accept what Dr. Janov is saying and to go into Primal Therapy is a major, major decision on one’s part and there is no guarantee that the outcome will be as Dr. Janov has indicated. That is, at a minimum, he believes that one has to totally let themselves go and completely face their past until they have felt a vast majority of their pain in order to be “cured.” This means giving up those protective mechanisms that saved them from mental and perhaps physical death in childhood (according to Primal Theory). One has ponder carefully the implications of giving up defenses that save them from insanity in childhood, a very tall order to evaluate.

 

 In summary, doing Primal Therapy is a total commitment and total belief of all of Janov’s theories which almost borders on being cult-like. Realize also that Janov strictly believes that he is the only one who can correctly perform Primal Therapy.

 

Also and more importantly and revealingly there is absolutely no information in his books about his exact success rate in terms of specific types of problems and successful cures. There are no statistics of this type. He leads you to believe he can cure anything and anyone and criticizes people for asking for this information. (I have read all of Dr. Janov’s books).

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Primal Healing (2007)

a review by the editor of the Debunking Primal Therapy website

Throughout the book Primal Healing there are warning-signs of the hallmarks of pseudoscience, as given in section 2 through 5 on this website.  But still, for the novice, it is actually quite difficult to distinguish it from real science. 

What is confusing to a novice or to someone unfamiliar with primal, is that Janov does sometimes quote real science, but the science he quotes does not confirm or disconfirm his therapy. He takes the legitimate science done by others and then explains it in terms of primal theory.  It should be pointed out, for those not in the know, that those legitimate scientists do not recommend primal therapy.  From this website’s section on falsifiability, we should have already been able to predict that it would be possible to explain any findings in terms of primal theory: because Janov’s theory is untestable and can be stretched to explain any outcome of any experiment. Freud’s and Marx’s theories also have this quality.

As an exercise to illustrate the lack of falsifiability, I challenge the reader to try this short thought experiment:

1. take any one of the legitimate science examples that is used in Primal Healing and focus on that one finding for the rest of this exercise. 

2.Then look at how Janov interprets that with primal theory, and most likely how he says it reinforces his early theory. 

3. But then, and here is the challenge, imagine that the science actually found something different, perhaps the opposite of what was actually found.

4.  Now try to use primal theory to explain that outcome. 

Chances are primal theory will explain even the opposite of the studies outcome.And that different outcome could also be interpreted in such a way to be said to confirm his earlier convictions.  This is the essence of an unfalsifiable theory; it explains most or all possible outcomes.  Such theories are considered useless in science, and are considered to be more in the realm of religion.

But the most important aspect to understand about Janov’s book is the subtle and easily missed social coercion pressures.  The social influence exerted in this book (and his other books) is enormous.   Such peer pressure creates such turmoil in naive readers that is then followed by eventual submission (“to the feeling” Janovians would insist). In turn this social influence, once it achieves some kind of commitment, is strong enough to create lifelong loyalty to the belief system.

In Primal Healing, as with his other writings, Janov reinterprets and redefines the whole field of psychology and neurology for his followers.  In doing so, he gives them a lens to interpret and explain evidence that may be contrary to primal therapy.  He makes it unnecessary for his followers to look into the data themselves, he interprets it and hand picks it for them.  You will notice, it you take the time to read his other writings, that Janov never recommends the reader to do some independent learning about psychology from non-primal sources.  The interpretation is taken care of; all the primal participant need do is feel, and leave the intellectual work to the leaders.

As in Janov’s other books, Primal Healing attacks “talk therapies”.  This despite his therapy also being a talk therapy: primal therapy would be classified in the psychoanalytical branch. Primal therapy is a catharsis therapy influenced by Freud’s early trauma theory and the hydraulic model of emotion and catharsis. Janov portrays all the other therapies as making participants become “in their head.” He hardly falls short of ridiculing the other therapies.  Janov misrepresents cognitive therapy in such an unfair way it actually is nauseating (see p. 127).  He makes cognitive therapy sound ultimately unfullfilling and shallow by presenting it in an inaccurate way.  He uses a “straw-man” method of persuasion, by which he says the cognitivists are saying something that they don’t really say.  On page 128, for example, he says that they are arguing “there is no reality.”  This is not the case at all. This book is highly unreliable as a source of information about psychology. 

In Janov’s blind attack on what he calls “cognivists,” he fails to mention that cognitive psychology deals with emotions as well as thoughts. In coining the term cognivitists, he seems to be unaware that cognitive development theory is different than cognitive therapy, which is in turn different for cognitive psychology, which in turn is a different area from cognitive neuroscience. None of these areas are just about thoughts as Janov seems to suggest: there is no artificial restrictions or doctrines restricting the acquisition on knowledge in psychology. Ironically. there are the restraints of dogma in primal theory and therapy.   Cognitive psychology, especially social cognition, does study both feelings and thoughts. Cognitive therapy does deal with both emotions and thoughts. So contrary to Janov’s message: nothing the brain does is off-limits in psychological science.  

If the reader does not know what cognitive psychology or cognitive therapy is, or the differences in such areas of psychology: it is worth going out and finding out from non primal sources.  One must understand that books like Primal Healing give very poor quality of information.  Better information can be found in modern textbooks, peer-reviewed papers, academic book chapters.  If such resources sound dry or too expensice there are free podcasts on psychology available on Itunes: I especially recommend those from UC Berkeley.

In Primal Healing, Janov thinks in terms of Kuhnian paradigm-shifts and scientific revolutions. By doing so, Janov seems willing and able to ignore evidence from other areas of psychology perhaps because he considers them as coming from another paradigm.  He seems to suggest he is the next Galileo or Einstein, which may be more wishful thinking or narcissism.

Despite Janov’s rather ironic attacks, Cognitive therapy has had good clinical results. Primal therapy has not, and to attack an effective therapy could be considered unethical.   If cognitive therapy has some efficacy on a mental disorder, then by definition it will reduce distress in some of those people.  Many people do beat themselves up too much, and reducing that negative self-talk (as is a part of cognitive therapy) can really change peoples lives.  I think the primal therapy participants who report to Janov their experience of cognitive therapy provide him with unreliable information becasue at that point they are converted believers in primal therapy.  Their beliefs will undermine any attempt to do cognitive therapy, and their conversion to primal therapy will make them interpret all other therapies in a negative light.  Janov provides a subtle kind of denigration of the “cognivists”, in which the underlying theme is that they are robotic and unfeeling and Janov shows his followers clear social expectations. 

I should add there are other effective treatments out there, apart from cognitive therapy. Some of which may be more appropriate than cognitive therapy for specific disorders. I am not recommending any specific one of them, but encourage further learning from non-primal reliable sources.

But more powerful than this is the social influence (and expectations) exerted with the following sentences:

“Does Primal Therapy have it’s failures? Yes…We have a very hard time with those who took LSD or ecstasy trips, or those psychopaths who incorporated the therapy into their tendency to scam and fake.”

Janov’s use of the term sociopath or psychopath toward people who don’t report success in his therapy is chillingly similar to Scientologist’s use of the label “suppressive persons” (SP’s). It was my observation that most primal participants often had no diagnosable mental problems before reading the primal books, and they come to primal with the aim to become more feelingful, to save the world, to reach the ideal tension-free love-laden life as promised in Janov’s books. The abuse many encounter in primal therapy can push some toward being meaner, and disruptive, but that is due to the situation, not a psychopathic personality. 

Similarly the majority of the complainers had not taken LSD. The one person I met who had taken LSD had done so as a direct result of Janov’s early writings. He/she also had totally understandable and correct criticisms and was harshly and unfairly treated in my opinion.

Janov goes on to say:

“There are those who are very defensive and shut off, who take a long time to open up, but if they stay with it, they are often successful.”

Janov here (maybe unknowingly) is giving cues:  If you think your primal therapy doesn’t work, keep at it, it will work some time in the future.  As a result of such social pressure, some people have been in primal therapy for decades and truly believe they still cannot live properly without Dr Janov’s center.  Yet these people are capable people who would not have met criteria for mental illness before reading about primal (many of them were college educated relatively normal people), and only chose to come to therapy initially after being promised the ideal tension-free feelingful lives in Janov’s books. 

Does Janov and other primal therapists think it is enough to just have an explanation, without seeing any need to make that explanation be testable or base it on any evidence (or criteria in DSM)? One has to ask the question, in the 1950s, when I think Janov was at school did they teach anything about falsifiability? Is it possible to teach falsifiability and Freudian theory together?  If so, was it accepted or rejected by Janov, and why?

In my judgment, Janov has set it up in a way that people are not going to tell him directly the problems with primal therapy.  His followers are going to continue reinforcing his beliefs and visa versa.  If the group ever falls, however, the problems with the theory, the therapy, the unrecognized abuse, the lost years, the opportunity costs and the lack of evidence will have to be addressed.

On page 272 of Primal Healing, Janov writes: “[primal therapy] is based on sound scientific principles and 35 years of research”.  In my opinion, that is misleading to say the least.  Birth primals it seems were suggested up by one person, (maybe influenced by an earlier psychologist, like Otto Rank)  initially and agreed eventually in consensus in the small counterculture group (source: Journal of Primal Therapy(1974)), incorporating tears were the idea of Vivian Janov, based on no experimental evidence (source The Primal Scream original edition).  It was made up as far as I can tell, it was not based on scientific principles or controlled experiments or psychological science.

On page 272 Janov, in a further attempt to undermine peoples trust in mainstream psychology, attacks the diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM) – which is simply a guide to make sure there are standards in labeling that are consistent.  Its not ridiculous as Janov suggests, and its faults and limitations are well listed by the DSM authors themselves.  Yes, maybe the pressures of drug companies are a problem in psychology, but, as always, Dr Janov seems to present it as if he and only he is saying that.  The reality is everybody is complaining about that too!  The DSM is not incidentally written by behaviorists, as Janov argues, there are hardly any behaviorists left in psychology (most use the biopsychosocial model according to my psychology lecturer).  The psychoanalysis vs. behaviorist argument is over. It was very prominent in the 1950s, and yes the behaviorists developed grand theories based on early experimental evidence, but at least they did experiments that when developed further, eventually proved their early theories incomplete or too grand.  Some of the behaviorists ideas are still useful today (as are psychoanalytic ideas), but there is a clear need recognized by most now that internal processes such as emotion, thoughts and traits are important in psychology. Hence the development of the cognitive branch of psychology.

To be clear, when you hear things like “behavioral science” or “cognitive science” remember that the science in these disciplines is not constrained.  Emotions can be and are studied in these disciplines.

In my opinion, the book Primal Healing feels manipulating and bullying.  Those educated in science and social psychology could be deeply upset and even nauseated by this book. Dr Janov is such a persuasive writer it is difficult to try and counter his intelligence, and I don’t know anyone who sees it important enough to put in the time and resources to do it.  But I do want to encourage as strongly as I possibly can for people to learn about science, cults, and social psychology so that they can understand for themselves how Dr Janov exerts so much influence over his followers with so little real evidence, no proper peer review, no replication, no real falsifiability and no clinical efficacy or clinical safety testing.  In my opinion, if Janov is a genius, as a lot of his followers have claimed, it is for achieving that level of social influence.

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