Primal Therapy, Neurosis, Truths, and Adjustments

Primal Therapy, Neurosis, Truths, and Adjustments

Our lives are nothing but a series of adjustments/responses to external stimuli. Our thoughts are encapsulated, distilled summaries and consciousness of those adjustments/responses. We are but the sum of our experiences and our responses to the experiences.

Each psychotherapy is an approach, a technique, a theoretical framework to view the experience and our adjusting process /response to the experiences, and finally to come up with a suggestion to evaluate the success or lack thereof of the adjusting process. Life is a series of challenges and adjustments/question and answers/stimuli and responses. We are not the only organism doing this. The measure of our success or not lies in the longevity of our existence and our feeling of happiness or not regarding such an existence.

We cannot run away from ourselves/cannot really practice self-deception. Our conscience and our own consciousness of our feelings would tell us what kind of life we have.

Primal therapy is founded by a high school dropout who was discovered by the Army during the IQ testing that the kid had exceptional intelligence. The kid was encouraged to pursue higher education. He responded well to the encouragement and became very cocksure in his insistence that his therapy is the only one that is relevant in the field of psychotherapy. His therapy was a sensation in the 1970's and the phrase "primal scream" has become part of the the vocabulary of the English language. The therapy is past its heyday and the founder has been viewed as extremely arrogant and unyielding. Some critics have opined Janov's original humble academic performance as a teenager has led him to overcompensate for the vaunted view of his analysis of the cause of neurosis.

My own eclectic reading, romantic journeys, sensitive make-up, and penchant for solitude have led me to be more aware than most humans of the whole dynamics of knowledge acquisition about oneself and the people on this planet. I have time and again encountered instances that I am different than most humans: more honest intellectually. The reason could be that I am used to emotional pain. Denial is a coping response in pain avoidance. Most humans are cowards, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. I am not.

I just did some reading about IQ and the meaning of the score of 135 for me and 140 for my son, and its implications for my interest in language acquisition and written expression of my thoughts.

It is very easy to find out how we score on an IQ test. All we need to do is to get on the Net and spend 20 minutes or so on a test.

My latest analysis of human condition and the reason why I hold most of them in contempt: monkeys revel in mediocrities and commonalities yet they often wear them as badges of honor and distinction. They think it is noble to lust after power, fame, and glory. I am no monkey. I hanker and hunger for enduring veracities: honor, love, knowledge, beauty, arts, justice, peace, and freedom.

Wissai
March 18, 2013