The Primal Scream

This book was first published in the 1970's when it appeared that nearly everybody was dissatisfied with their lives and sought a "Miracle Cure" through Therapy. In this book Dr. Janov displays gross intolerance for legitimate, proven Traditional Therapies and insists he has THE CURE(!!!) for self obsessed "neurotics' as he refers to his patients. Furthermore he detests the overspending by consumers in our Society yet he offers a "Finance Plan" to his potential troubled clients.It seems like his Therapy involves lying down in a dark room and saying things like "Mommie why is Daddy so mean to me and how come he drinks so much?' . There is nothing that Dr. Janov can offer which can't be fixed by a moderate dosage of Diazapam and Stelazine. I give this book 5 stars because I did find the endless whinings of his patients to be most amusing.

you have found the Book. So now you must read it. If you're interested in Life. Human life. Primal theory isn't magic, except insofar as the laws of physics are magic. A sign of Primal theory's truth-value-usefulness is the intensity-depth of the insights resultant from its practice, or contemplation. Janov simply gets deeper into it than most. Deeper into everything. This isn't to say I believe what he believes. I happen to think Darwinism is totally wacky. How arrogant is it to think you know the origins of mind? As youngsters, we have innate mental and biological needs. The need to be loved. The need for our mother not to drink alc while pregnant. And yes, love is not extra, something needed only by wimps. Love is the substance without which a child becomes neurotic, or split from his real needs, embracing symbolic needs, like the need for power, the need for too much food, the need to perform perverse sexual acts. Without love, Primal Pain is created, which may be too strong to be fully felt by a child, who represses this Pain and its meaning. Repressed truth doesn't disappear, it returns to exert physiologic pressure that haunts us, gives us allergies, headaches, addictions, disease. The only escape from Pain is to feel it, to become conscious, to wake up to our sickness, and become our real selves, become ex-neurotic. I tend to believe that reading ThePrimalScream is almost as good as getting the therapy. But what do I know--I've been without a partner for a decade. Brains are computers, and computers do wierd things sometimes.

This book is a great book. It is everything that you might think it is. Tackling - how people deal with pain, What is Pain (to human organisms), and how to heal from Pain. While at first it may seem like a mystical trance-like therapy, its not. The first 50 pages (or so) deal with the theory behind Primal Therapy. It defines primal Pain, and discusses how it affects our life, day to day. This part is somewhat unsupported. Dr. Janov leaves the evidence to support his theory for the rest of the book. With patient journals and case histories, the rest of the book tackles topics including sexuality, fear, hope, and anger. It is the rest of the book, through the patient journals and case histories, that make the book real. (and easy to read).

Janov writes a compelling and extremely readable account of the new paradigm in psychology that he innovated, Primal Therapy. This is one of the seminal works in Psychology; it is very important and I highly recommend it.