I kind of have a thing for kitschy psych schools of the seventies…kitschy is so not the right word here but humor me.
The Original!
“A thirty-year-old man, whom I shall call Gary Hillard, was relating with great feeling how his parents had always criticized him, had never loved him, and had generally messed up his life. I urged him to call out for them; he demurred. He “knew” that they didn’t love him, so what was the point? I asked him to indulge my whim. Halfheartedly, he started calling for Mommy and Daddy. Soon I noticed he was breathing faster and deeper. His calling turned into an involuntary act that led to writhing, near-convulsions, and finally to a scream.
“Both of us were shocked. What I had believed was an accident, an idiosyncratic reaction of one patient, had just been repeated in almost identical fashion.
“Afterward, when he quieted down, Gary was flooded with insights. He told me that his whole life seemed to have suddenly fallen into place. This ordinarily unsophisticated man began transforming himself in front of my eyes into what was virtually another human being. He became alert; his sensorium opened up; he seemed to understand himself.
“Because of the similarities of the two reactions, I began listening even more carefully to the tapes I had made of Danny’s and Gary’s sessions. I tried to analyze what common factors or techniques produced the reactions. Slowly some meaning began to emerge. Over the next months I tried various modifications and approaches in asking the patient to call for his parents. Each time there occurred the same dramatic results.
“I have come to regard that scream as the product of central and universal pains which reside in all neurotics. I call them Primal Pains because they are the original, early hurts upon which all later neurosis is built. It is my contention that these pains exist in every neurotic each minute of his later life, irrespective of the form of his neurosis. These pains often are not consciously felt because they are diffused throughout the entire system where they affect body organs, muscles, the blood and lymph system and, finally, the distorted way we behave.
“Primal Therapy is aimed at eradicating these pains. It is revolutionary because it involves overthrowing the neurotic system by a forceful upheaval. Nothing short of that will eliminate neurosis, in my opinion.
“Primal Theory is an outgrowth of my observations about why specific changes take place. Theory, I must emphasize, did not precede clinical experience. When I watched Danny and Gary writhing on the floor in the throes of Primal Pain, I had no idea what to call it. The theory has been expanded and deepened by the continuing reports of one patient after another who has been cured of neurosis. This book is an invitation to explore the revolution they began.”
– from The Primal Scream by Dr. Arthur Janov, 1970
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