“I just wanted to compliment you on your site. It is about time someone posted some contrary information about Primal therapy. I was a patient at the Institute around 199-. Although the Institute does not seem as “hardcore” as the Center, much of what you describe I experienced there, and I left feeling much more damaged than when I came. I truly wish I never heard of it.

Most of the people who started around the time I did left disillusioned, damaged, feeling bad about themselves and distrustful of others … I think they are doing more damage than good. I firmly believe if you are depressed it will only make you worse. I did not see one person there who seemed to get anything like what is described in the books.

All I can really recall about it after __ years was just crazy people yelling and screaming at each other, and an incredibly hostile vibe. How this helps I do not know.

Thanks again for the site, and keep up the fight. It made me feel better just reading your site.

…I think the longer your site is out there, the more former patients who read it, the more support will pour in. Like I said, most of the people I started with
left disillusioned calling it negative and cult like…” 

A.B., USA , June 2007,

[A.B. went on to say that those who had good social support, (I presume he meant outside of the primal community, non-primal friends and family), seemed to recover better from primal therapy.  It occurred to me as I read it that maybe this suggests it is worth maintaining or renewing non-primal friendships and family bonds instead of breaking them as a result of following the primal doctrine.

A.B.'s main therapist was very experienced and originally trained by A. Janov]

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 [http://eqi.org/janov.htm is a link to a story of a patient who spent 2 years in therapy in the late 1990s at Dr Janov's Primal Center.

Here is the story pasted below.  The following words in curly brackets are not those of this website's author(s).  Note the patient interviewed was actually at the Primal Center , not Institute as is incorrectly stated in the title:]

{Cautionary note about Arthur Janov and the Janov Institute

(These notes were written in 2002)

Arthur Janov is the author of a book from which I took extensive notes: The feeling child:

In July of 2002 I met someone who had spent two years in California in the late 1990’s going through Janov’s Primal Therapy treatments. He told me some things which affirmed a few of my concerns about Janov, and which raised many new concerns. Before I met this person, who I will call Antonio, I thought highly of Janov, but I still thought he overestimated the influence of the birth process. Antonio confirmed that Janov does not talk much about the affect of parents on teenagers, for example. He said Janov believes that a child is basically set for life by age 10 or 12. I disagree with this since I have meet people who said everything was basically fine in their lives until around age 10 or 12. This is when they started to think for themselves and really question their parents.

I have also heard several people tell me that they were “Daddy’s little princess” till about age 10 or 12. Then all the arguments started and the negative feelings grew. The emotional needs for caring, understanding, acceptance, self-control, respect and freedom were not met, leading to depression and suicidal feelings and thoughts.

Below is a summary of Antonio’s concerns. He asked me not to use his real name because he had signed some kind of legal agreement and disclaimer and even though he lives in Europe now, he was still afraid of their reaction if they should read this.

- The therapy is a bit simplistic in the sense that it emphasizes emotional work while neglecting intellectual reflection on feelings.

- They were not as sharp intellectually as Antonio would have liked. He said sometimes they were not able to deal with complex issues.

- He spent over $20,000 in two years of therapy there.

- He felt he was a bit exploited. He said it helped a little but you have to keep going back again and again. He said some people were going to several hours of individual therapy each week and several hours of group therapy.

- At that time the individual therapy cost $110 US per hour. The group therapy cost $70 US.

- He saw people there who desperate and working low paying jobs at 10 dollars an hour so they could pay for the therapy. Some even had to sell their houses to pay for the therapy.

- He said they would not negotiate with low income people. They were very strict. If someone did not have the money they would have to stop therapy immediately.

- The first few weeks cost $6,000 for everyone.

- If you started therapy and paid the $6,000 for the three weeks of intensive therapy, then you dropped out of therapy you had to pay another $2,000 to go to a required two week intensive program.

- Some of the staff members seemed to have a lot of problems themselves even though they may have been in therapy for up to 10 years. One staff member was particularly rude to the clients which caused Antonio to wonder about the management of the institute.

- A lot of claims were made about the therapy, almost like it is faith healing or a miracle cure. Antonio did not believe the therapy lived up to the claims.

- He said many people looked at the therapy like a religion when they first started therapy. They came with very high and often unrealistic expectations. Because of the claims made in the Janov’s books and the personal stories which are reported in his books, combined with the Janov’s theories on the connections between the emotional state and the body, Antonio was surprised when he saw people there who were overweight and wearing glasses. He expected that everyone would be in near perfect physical shape.

- Antonio was also surprised when he saw people who had been there for four or more years. He was given the impression that for Primal Therapy a person needs a maximum of two years to work.

- He said it was a bit like a cult, but he wouldn’t go that far to call it that because you could leave. Still, listening to Antonio reminded me of the Scientologists.

- From reading the marketing brochures you get the impression that you will receive very scientific electronic brain scans and other objective measurements. But when Antonio asked about where these things were, he got very evasive answers. There was also supposed to be an important member of the Janov Institute, a professor from Denmark who was said to be working with the brain mapping, according to the brochures, but over the two years that Antonio was there he never saw this professor and never was offered the chance for a brain scan. One of Antonio’s roommates told him that when someone had questioned Ms. Janov, she got defensive and said something like, “If you don’t like it here you can leave.”

- He thought the therapists were a bit naive and gullible, but generally had good intentions. He said they almost worshipped the Janovs. One of the therapists said once that “Arthur Janov is totally without defenses.”

- The therapists also seemed to be a little too closely controlled by the Janov’s. Therapists were not encouraged to use much of their own judgment or styles in treating individual patients.

- He heard many things which caused him to feel skeptical about the success stories which are highly publicized in Janov’s books.

- He told me there was a book written around 1975 by R. D. Rosen called Psychoblahblah or something. Later I found out he was probably talking about the book Psychobabble: Fast talk and quick cure in the age of feeling,

- He also said some people took Janov’s ideas and started something called “Feeling Therapy” and these people were really exploiting people. There was a book written about them called Therapy Gone Mad.

- Once he told one of his therapists that she seemed to be feeling angry and defensive and she angrily denied it! This reminds me of how important it is that the person who is trying to help another is honest and authentic with his or her feelings. It also reminds me that one thing people want and need is to know that someone really cares for them. They don’t just want techniques.

- He said that if you questioned things you would be told standard defensive replies, rather than real answers.

- He said the therapists would say things a bit arrogantly like “you can’t hurt me.” Yet he didn’t think the therapists were showing their real feelings.

- When he talked to others clients there about his concerns, they would often defend the Janov’s. They might say excuse a therapist’s behavior by saying, “She is only doing that to trigger you.” This reminded me of the teacher whose students would catch him and a mistake and say “I just wanted to see if you were paying attention”!

One of the positive things he said about his time there was that you could say anything, or almost anything. Once though, he heard that one of the directors said certain words were not allowed when they were directed towards the therapists.

I asked him how satisfied he was with the therapy overall. He said while he was there it was okay, but the moment he left it didn’t help him anymore. In fact he felt worse at a certain point. He said they break down your defenses but they don’t really help you solve your problem or go to the real core of your problem. He said they neglect the connections between your intellect and your emotions.

There was a lot of time spent on emotional release. But not enough time was spent on understanding where the emotions came from or how to make lasting changes.

He said the therapy did help some people, but in general it was not as helpful for highly intellectual and cognitive people.

He said some people were going there for years, even in one case a man was going there for over 10 years and was still releasing his anger and was still feeling resentment from his childhood.

I asked him if he felt more compassion for children after his time there. He said no. He felt less. This was because he felt resentful that he had spent so much time there and gotten nothing out of it. He didn’t want to even think about how children felt. Instead if he was around a child and he started to feel annoyed and impatient with the child, he was tempted to hit the child, just as he had been hit by his father.

I asked him if the therapy gave him any lasting skills which he has used since he left. He said that it did not. He said that in fact, some of the people seemed to be more irresponsible than when they began therapy. He said too much was attributed to early childhood experiences. Some people used what they learned to get stuck in a trap of blaming their parents.

He said they were not taught how to take responsibility for managing their feelings. They were only told how to release their negative feelings. He said they were taught that nearly everything that happened to them in the present triggered childhood reactions, unless they went through the birth process enough times. He said this might take 100 times, but then they would be cured. He said they were led to believe that once they had released all of their early child hood pain they would be cured for life. But he did not find this to be happening in reality

Antonio and some of the others there were concerned about Janov’s values. It bothered him, for instance, that Janov always flew first class and lived in a multi-million dollar home in Malibu, an expensive suburb of Los Angeles. Some people actually left when they found out how Janov lived. Antonio told me about something Janov had written in his book, “Prisoners of Pain.” Janov wrote that cars are really only needed for basic transportation and yet people buy expensive, gas-guzzling cars. In this way they are used to try to fill other needs, such as the need to express their individuality and level of status, power and importance. Then as I was leaving, Antonio asked me what kind of car I thought Janov’s wife drove. I guessed a Mercedes or a BMW. He said, “Close. A Jaguar convertible.”}

[Curly-bracketed words above are from the website http://eqi.org/janov.htm, a website done by S Hein, reprinted here with permission.]

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“Surviving a Therapeutic Cult,” The Gay & Lesbian Review, July-August 2007:

This story is an interesting tale because it illustrates how primal theory can lead to over-medication, which is an ironic twist on a therapy that started out trying to religiously avoid medication.  This is not the only case of over-medication in primal theory based approaches.

Excerpts:

“Alfonzo seemed to offer hope in a form of treatment based on Primal Therapy, the goal of which was to erase the mental imprints of my biological parents via intense, primal sessions” (p. 25)

“In May 1997, I mailed a five-page letter of complaint to one of Canada’s colleges of physicians and surgeons. Essentially, the complaint stated that the doctor ran a cult in which I was excessively overmedicated, forced into providing free labor, subjected to his homophobic dogma, and treated in an effort to ‘cure’ me of my homosexuality.” (p. 26)

“Surviving a Therapeutic Cult,” The Gay & Lesbian Review, July-August 2007.

Here is a link to part of the article, the full article is available if you have a US library membership: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-31855496_ITM