Posts

Posted on

Bruce’s letter to the LA Times

by Bruce Wilson

On November 15, the LA Times published an article on “four psychology fads,” one of which was primal therapy. In typical fashion, the journalist reported the same tired old errors about primal therapy that have been around since its creation. Peter and I each wrote a letter to the editor, but the paper didn’t publish them. Here is a longer version of mine. The copy I sent to the Times was cut to 150 words, as per the requirements for letters.

Continue reading “Bruce’s letter to the LA Times”

Share
Posted on

Support the Kid’s Help Phone Line

by Bruce Wilson

A health/medical writer colleague, Marijke Durning, alerted me to a cause very worth supporting. Kid’s Help Phone is a free, confidential, bilingual call-in service for Canadian kids in distress, no matter what the issue. We’ve all heard the horror stories of  kids pushed to suicide by bullying, or who had to escape to the streets to escape abuse at home. Kid’s Help Phone is a life line for these kids and may mean the difference between life and death. I’m sending some money today. Please do the same.

Share
Posted on

“A Paradigm Shift is happening!”

by Peter Prontzos

That was the assessment of Dr. Marti Glenn, one of the keynote speakers at the 2010 International Congress of The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology & Health (APPPH), which took place from November 11-14 at Asilomar, California.

And while she was not speaking of Primal Therapy per se, much of what she discussed is very relevant to Primal Theory. Indeed, most of the people who presented at the Congress, as well as those I talked with, seemed to have a very positive view of the key elements of Arthur Janov’s work.

This is not to say that there wasn’t some “booga-booga” as well (e.g. “As eternal consciousness, each soul creates a plan for their upcoming ensoulment…”), but most of the Congress focused on the emerging science of the pre- and perinatal periods of life.

Continue reading ““A Paradigm Shift is happening!””

Share
Posted on

No (deep) feelings please, we’re psychologists

by Bruce Wilson

Jules Roth, co-director of the Denver Primal Center used to tell a story about lectures he gave to university psychology students about primal therapy. Invariably, there were three types of response. The first and largest group of students just took notes with hopes of passing the exam; a second, smaller group would look askance or make sarcastic remarks about “screaming your way to happiness” and a third group, usually consisting of just a few students, would approach him quietly after the lecture to ask more about the therapy or where they could get it. There was a hush-hush quality about their questions, as though being interested in deep feelings was something to be embarrassed about.

Continue reading “No (deep) feelings please, we’re psychologists”

Share
Posted on

Why is primal therapy ignored or criticized by mainstream psychology?

by Bruce Wilson

Search for “primal therapy” on PubMed, the US National Institute of Medicine’s database of the world’s medical literature, and you will a grand total of 12 papers.

There is only one paper in the 1990s: a survey that criticizes primal as one of the “least sound” of mental health treatments, along with neurolinguistic programming, bioenergetics, and aversive therapy. A more recent survey (2006) ranks “primal scream therapy” as less credible than prefrontal lobotomy, EST, NLP, craniosacral therapy, AND “dolphin-assisted  therapy for treatment of developmental disabilities.” Only slightly less credible than primal were “treatments for PTSD caused by alien abduction, past lives therapy, future lives therapy,” “use of pyramids for restoration of energy,” and angel therapy.

Continue reading “Why is primal therapy ignored or criticized by mainstream psychology?”

Share
Posted on

Welcome to The Primal Mind

Welcome to our blog on affective neuroscience and how it can be applied to heal human suffering. We’re just getting warmed up here so be patient – we’ll be posting regularly very soon. In the meantime, mosey on over to the “about” page and learn more about why we are writing this blog.

Peter and I have been friends for forty years and over that entire period we’ve been involved in deep feeling therapy (primal therapy) in an attempt to heal our childhood wounds and open to a more fulfilling, integrated, and feeling life. When we met, each of us was suffering personally and searching for a more authentic, real life in a world that was, and still is, crazy in so many ways.

Continue reading “Welcome to The Primal Mind”

Share