Sunday, August 28, 2016

On the Difference Between Abreaction and Feeling (Part 11/15)


 Awareness V. Consciousness

 The leitmotif of every intellectual therapy is that awareness helps us make progress. I’ll grant that awareness helps; but being conscious cures. Unless we are able to achieve consciousness in psychotherapy, the most we can do is tread water, having the illusion of progress without its essence. When it comes to measuring progress in psychotherapy, it matters whether one measures the whole system or only aspects of brain function. Awareness fits the latter. It has a specific seat in the brain.

 Psychotherapy has been in the business of awareness for too long. Since the days of Freud, we have apotheosized insights. We are so used to appealing to the almighty frontal cortex, the structure that has made us the advanced human beings that we are, that we forgot our precious ancestors, their instincts and feelings. Thus, when the patient is uncomfortable during a conventional, talk-therapy session, therapists typically take the position that, “More insight is what we need; the patient is not aware enough.” Yet, what lies on low levels of brain function is impervious to the realm of any ideas, where insights lie. That is why we can be anxious and aware, but not anxious and conscious. Consciousness is the end of anxiety.

 Consciousness means connection to what is driving us – our disconnected feelings. Awareness means dealing with only the last evolutionary neuronal development: the pre-frontal cortex. It is the difference between separation on the top cerebral level versus the confluence of all three levels, which is consciousness. Once we are conscious, we have words to explain our feelings, but words do not eradicate them; they explain and elucidate. We are deeply wounded long before words make their appearance in our brains. Words are neither the problem nor the solution. They are the last evolutionary step in processing the feeling or sensation. They are the companions of feelings.

 We need a therapy of consciousness, not awareness. If we believe that we have an id stewing inside of us, there is no proper treatment because the cause is an apparition – a phantom that doesn’t exist. Or worse, it is a genetic force that is immutable and therefore cannot be treated. In any case, we are the losers. There is no powerlessness like being unconscious; running around in a quandary about what to do about this or that, about sexual problems, high blood pressure, depression, and temper outbursts. It all seems like such a mystery. The aware person, or he who seeks awareness, has to be told everything. He listens, obeys – and suffers. Awareness doesn’t make us sensitive, empathic, or loving. It makes us aware of why we can’t be. It’s like being aware of a virus. It’s good to know what the problem is, but nothing changes. The best awareness can do is create ideas that negate need and pain.




7 comments:

  1. What is missing here in Art:s writing is the criminal act that is now practiced in view of what primal therapy talked about for decades ago.

    Are there any excuses for imprisoning suffering with forced medication? Forced medication for what options they never had interest to shed light on primal therapy.

    Is there any substance to succeed in changing someone that signing his death by doing it? Yes for those who have given up their lives... but it has no professional around psychiatry ever thought to do? This is what can be likened to what we have in front of us.

    What more can words do than to tell you that 2 + 2 = 4 ... and if you refuse to admit it ... along with the majority... then just think what the outcome would be... are.

    When reality catches up with us for what the future death means then we face the same anxiety as we have already gone through... as are the reason why aging may be a so dramatic breakdown. No body in a decomposition process can be stopped in the face of aging death!

    What is more important for humanity... there are small innocent children watching in their future of pure hell! Is not that something that can make us act more revolutionary?

    Have I not heard enough of suspicions against a revolution indispensable to human love and warmth?

    Frank

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Frank,

    well said.

    As a tradesman and a team leader with 30 years experience learning it myself on the job from others and in intentional workshops, I can only say that we are limited to what we can do as individuals to the extent we can look into the future and trust our perceptions, therein lies the essence of hope. The past will not support us any further than we can allow it back into ourselves. No-one else can do that for us, so, the real inclusions can hardly ever be evidence for a litigation. Who as a patient would want a fight in court? Forgiveness is a red herring. To find the therapist, the mentor, the 'help', well, we can keep trying to do that through collaborating with other feeling people; can't we? I doubt we can rely on the institutions, it's got to be a grass roots thing near where we live as individuals.

    Perhaps that's what the Legacy offers? - A way to start some small grass roots all over the planet.

    Paul G.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Frank and us all,

      I've been on about this here for about 3 or 4 years. But I'm not 'it'. France & Art are 'it'.

      They can't do the 'marketing'. And of course it's not about beliefs or money either. That's the rub with the world we live in; so much of what we conceive has had to rely on a financial or ideational base.

      What we have with the Legacy is an opportunity to really address the issues we face with evolution and our place in it.

      I'm making plans to be more involved with the Legacy and I'm looking for collaborators. In the meantime we could on this blog think about what that really means at the 'grassroots'.

      Paul G.

      Delete
  3. the awareness that i was a child and almost total unconscience* of how it was.

    is it deliberate the use of the word consciousness instead of conscience? the later is older, more common and in my opinion more adequate word. certainly for me easier to translate. it has a more perceptive meaning. "consciousness" is more scientific, spiritual, mindful and buddhist. just an impression. though in english it is visually easily distinguishable from awareness.

    we need a therapy of conscience. how does it sound to you all?



    *this word does not exist

    ReplyDelete
  4. An email comment:
    "Great article, as I always do with your articles, I have shared this on twitter, g+1, and facebook. It's great to hear about your effective therapy. I just have "wild bear from the woods" therapy, self administered with all the effectiveness of a witch doctor reading about surgery in a language not his own and trying it out on himself. This wild bear therapy isn't lowering my blood pressure. (Imagine that, who would have thunk it?)
    "

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Art,

    this post reminds me of another post you wrote about the difference between 'Essence & Appearances'. & that surely is the problem with conventional psychotherapy; that it promotes appearances whilst claiming to address our damaged and hurting essence.

    Until we have had some real breakthrough to old feelings (not those we get from touching movies or rousing music), those feelings and sensations which are impossible to replicate by 'acting', such as locomotive breathing, apnea, or both alternating; or again crying AS a baby which is unmistakable and scary, hivgh pitched and tearing trying to attract a caring cuddle, a 'stroke', a caress. . . Until then conventional psychotherapy is a charade which only locks most patients into an eternal return to personality, to appearances and to mere awareness. . .

    Paul G.

    ReplyDelete

Review of "Beyond Belief"

This thought-provoking and important book shows how people are drawn toward dangerous beliefs.
“Belief can manifest itself in world-changing ways—and did, in some of history’s ugliest moments, from the rise of Adolf Hitler to the Jonestown mass suicide in 1979. Arthur Janov, a renowned psychologist who penned The Primal Scream, fearlessly tackles the subject of why and how strong believers willingly embrace even the most deranged leaders.
Beyond Belief begins with a lucid explanation of belief systems that, writes Janov, “are maps, something to help us navigate through life more effectively.” While belief systems are not presented as inherently bad, the author concentrates not just on why people adopt belief systems, but why “alienated individuals” in particular seek out “belief systems on the fringes.” The result is a book that is both illuminating and sobering. It explores, for example, how a strongly-held belief can lead radical Islamist jihadists to murder others in suicide acts. Janov writes, “I believe if people had more love in this life, they would not be so anxious to end it in favor of some imaginary existence.”
One of the most compelling aspects of Beyond Belief is the author’s liberal use of case studies, most of which are related in the first person by individuals whose lives were dramatically affected by their involvement in cults. These stories offer an exceptional perspective on the manner in which belief systems can take hold and shape one’s experiences. Joan’s tale, for instance, both engaging and disturbing, describes what it was like to join the Hare Krishnas. Even though she left the sect, observing that participants “are stunted in spiritual awareness,” Joan considers returning someday because “there’s a certain protection there.”
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Quotes for "Life Before Birth"

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Art Janov, one of the pioneers of fetal and early infant experiences and future mental health issues, offers a robust vision of how the earliest traumas of life can percolate through the brains, minds and lives of individuals. He focuses on both the shifting tides of brain emotional systems and the life-long consequences that can result, as well as the novel interventions, and clinical understanding, that need to be implemented in order to bring about the brain-mind changes that can restore affective equanimity. The transitions from feelings of persistent affective turmoil to psychological wholeness, requires both an understanding of the brain changes and a therapist that can work with the affective mind at primary-process levels. Life Before Birth, is a manifesto that provides a robust argument for increasing attention to the neuro-mental lives of fetuses and infants, and the widespread ramifications on mental health if we do not. Without an accurate developmental history of troubled minds, coordinated with a recognition of the primal emotional powers of the lowest ancestral regions of the human brain, therapists will be lost in their attempt to restore psychological balance.
Jaak Panksepp, Ph.D.
Bailey Endowed Chair of Animal Well Being Science
Washington State University

Dr. Janov’s essential insight—that our earliest experiences strongly influence later well being—is no longer in doubt. Thanks to advances in neuroscience, immunology, and epigenetics, we can now see some of the mechanisms of action at the heart of these developmental processes. His long-held belief that the brain, human development, and psychological well being need to studied in the context of evolution—from the brainstem up—now lies at the heart of the integration of neuroscience and psychotherapy.
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Lou Cozolino, PsyD, Professor of Psychology, Pepperdine University


In Life Before Birth Dr. Arthur Janov illuminates the sources of much that happens during life after birth. Lucidly, the pioneer of primal therapy provides the scientific rationale for treatments that take us through our original, non-verbal memories—to essential depths of experience that the superficial cognitive-behavioral modalities currently in fashion cannot possibly touch, let alone transform.
Gabor Maté MD, author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction

An expansive analysis! This book attempts to explain the impact of critical developmental windows in the past, implores us to improve the lives of pregnant women in the present, and has implications for understanding our children, ourselves, and our collective future. I’m not sure whether primal therapy works or not, but it certainly deserves systematic testing in well-designed, assessor-blinded, randomized controlled clinical trials.
K.J.S. Anand, MBBS, D. Phil, FAACP, FCCM, FRCPCH, Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, Anatomy & Neurobiology, Senior Scholar, Center for Excellence in Faith and Health, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare System


A baby's brain grows more while in the womb than at any time in a child's life. Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script That Rules Our Lives is a valuable guide to creating healthier babies and offers insight into healing our early primal wounds. Dr. Janov integrates the most recent scientific research about prenatal development with the psychobiological reality that these early experiences do cast a long shadow over our entire lifespan. With a wealth of experience and a history of successful psychotherapeutic treatment, Dr. Janov is well positioned to speak with clarity and precision on a topic that remains critically important.
Paula Thomson, PsyD, Associate Professor, California State University, Northridge & Professor Emeritus, York University

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downright fascinating to any lay person interested in the mysteries of the human psyche."
Dr. Bernard Park, MD, MPH

His new book “Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script that Rules Our Lives” shows that primal therapy, the lower-brain therapeutic method popularized in the 1970’s international bestseller “Primal Scream” and his early work with John Lennon, may help alleviate depression and anxiety disorders, normalize blood pressure and serotonin levels, and improve the functioning of the immune system.
One of the book’s most intriguing theories is that fetal imprinting, an evolutionary strategy to prepare children to cope with life, establishes a permanent set-point in a child's physiology. Baby's born to mothers highly anxious during pregnancy, whether from war, natural disasters, failed marriages, or other stressful life conditions, may thus be prone to mental illness and brain dysfunction later in life. Early traumatic events such as low oxygen at birth, painkillers and antidepressants administered to the mother during pregnancy, poor maternal nutrition, and a lack of parental affection in the first years of life may compound the effect.
In making the case for a brand-new, unified field theory of psychotherapy, Dr. Janov weaves together the evolutionary theories of Jean Baptiste Larmarck, the fetal development studies of Vivette Glover and K.J.S. Anand, and fascinating new research by the psychiatrist Elissa Epel suggesting that telomeres—a region of repetitive DNA critical in predicting life expectancy—may be significantly altered during pregnancy.
After explaining how hormonal and neurologic processes in the womb provide a blueprint for later mental illness and disease, Dr. Janov charts a revolutionary new course for psychotherapy. He provides a sharp critique of cognitive behavioral therapy, psychoanalysis, and other popular “talk therapy” models for treating addiction and mental illness, which he argues do not reach the limbic system and brainstem, where the effects of early trauma are registered in the nervous system.
“Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script that Rules Our Lives” is scheduled to be published by NTI Upstream in October 2011, and has tremendous implications for the future of modern psychology, pediatrics, pregnancy, and women’s health.
Editor