Primal Theory and Liberation: Janov, Freud and Jung.
Frederick Michael Farrar
The Cure for Neurosis: An Evolutionary Breakthrough?
The title I have given to this discussion begs a question: from what do we seek liberation? Primal theory, of course, has a definite view on that. In Primal theory the great curse afflicting humankind is neurosis, and primal therapy is the cure for that affliction. In the original primal view primal therapy was felt to be a major new discovery. Despite its similarity to a number of other therapies, particularly Gestalt, Primal theorists believed their therapy to be unique, tantamount to an evolutionary breakthrough for our species, and representing a radical break with Freudian psychoanalysis. In respect of this break, Janov, though retaining many of the most important features of Freudian theory, such as the notion of repression and the symbolic nature of dreams, introduced a new system of terminology to replace that of Freud.
The Unconscious: Instinctual Drives or Primal Pain?
Whereas Freud had believed that the core of the unconscious consisted of instinctual drives inherited as part of our animal nature, and Jung had believed that in addition to this the core unconscious harboured universal archetypal aswell as sub-conscious processes, Arthur Janov believed that Primal patients had discovered something very different. The unconscious, in Primal theory, consisted of unfelt psychological or physical pain. And whereas both Freud and Jung believed the unconscious had to be successfully sublimated and re-expressed by one’s ego, or self-identity, Janov, the founder of Primal therapy, spoke otherwise. The unconscious, insofar as it was unfelt pain, needed to be felt. As long as it remained unfelt it would remain unconscious and cause unfocused tension, compulsive behaviour, and the whole range of psychosomatic symptoms so familiar to Freud and his contemporaries.
Leaving aside for now Jung’s recognition of unconscious archetypal principles, there is, in the early psychoanalytical movement, the understanding that even at the baby stage biological needs are mediated by the baby’s primitive, instinctual system. This instinctual system, the id, gives rise to the instinctual drives which Freud referred to as the libido. Although Freud’s notion of the libido is dominated by his notions of infant erotism, a dominance which has since been heavily criticised as accounting for his failure to recognise widespread evidence of child sex abuse, the libido and primal feeling coincide at the deepest level, which in Janov’s system is referred to as “first-line consciousness”. In neither system is the power of instinctual energy underestimated. However, in the Freudian perspective, the unleashing of that power in a fully felt remembering experience is not encouraged as it is anticipated that this would weaken the ego still further and render it even more inadequate. To put it the other way round, Freud would have expected that such a liberation of raw libidinous energy would strengthen the instinctual id at the expense of the developing ego. The goal of psychoanalysis was to identify the repressed instincts and help the patient to devise more effective ways of fulfilling the needs which underlay them. In this regard, many modern Freudians consider Primal therapy, aswell as Gestalt therapy, to be harmful practises which encourage malignant regression of the psyche.
This reticence on the part of Freudians to allow the id to fully express itself, has been regarded by Janov as an expression of their failure to overcome their own neuroses, and a reinforcement of institutionalised neurosis and collective repression. For the Primal therapist, the goal of psychoanalysis is, in practise, the exact opposite of Primal therapy. Primal therapy seeks to liberate the unconscious whereas psychoanalysis seeks to better control it. Given the importance and depth of this difference we are entitled to ask: is this polarisation between Primal therapy and psychoanalysis truly valid?
Freud on Primary and Secondary Inhibition
In the previous paragraph we took note of Freud’s understanding of the core content of the unconscious, the id. The id is predominantly reflexive in nature and immediate, rather than learned; it is biological and emotional rather than conceptual. It is a coherent system which remains as a constant potentiality even after it has been superceded by the ego system. Inhibition of the id is a constant condition of ego activity as it incorporates basic needs and re-expresses them at the ego level.
The ego, according to Freud, develops out of the id as a result of perception during interaction with the environment. It is the knowledge of one’s self which one identifies with and whose interests one serves. The knowledge of one’s self and its interactions with the world modify one’s instinctual actions through the process of learning. This predominance of self-knowledge over instinct is, in Freud’s theory, the primary level of inhibition or repression.
Beyond this core content however is another, secondary level of unconscious material. This, Freud explained, is brought about by the ego’s ideals, which he called the super-ego. The super-ego constitutes the set of values, met with in the form of parental and social authority, which is accepted by the ego as its own. The presence of this set of internalised social values within the ego results in inhibition of certain of the ego’s own aspects, but can also result in repression of aspects of the super-ego.
The recognition of this complex dynamic relationship between three viable systems of normal consciousness is the cornerstone of the Freudian view, and acts as the basis for its understanding of psychopathology.
Janov on the Tripartite Brain.
Janov’s view of normal consciousness is based on his clients’ experiences and supplemented theoretically by the discovery in neuroscience of three relatively autonomous systems of functioning within the brain. These correlate with specific neural structures: the brain stem, the limbic system and the neocortex.
The brain stem and a number of associated structures are responsible for the functioning of the autonomous nervous system which regulates the vital activities of the body, such as heartbeat, body temperature and hormonal secretions. Primitive emotions are controlled by the level of consciousness focused on this area of the brain. Janov calls this first-line consciousness but it is clearly the same area of consciousness which Freud calls the id.
The next level of consciousness recognised by Janov is focused on the limbic system. This deals primarily with the person’s bodily interactions with the environment, and includes exploration, emotionality and object relationships. This level is referred to by Janov as second-line consciousness but is essentially the level of ego consciousness. It controls the formation of primary concepts.
Janov’s final level is third-line consciousness, the system of conceptual thought correlated with the neo-cortex. In Janov’s understanding this level should, in the normal person, have unhindered access to the lower systems of consciousness in order that it might properly serve the interests of the system as a whole. It is within this system that the Freudian super-ego lies, although this plays no part in Janov’s theoretical framework.
Like Freud, Janov recognises that repression can take place within and between the different levels of consciousness. Unlike Freud, however, Janov does not elaborate in depth the role of inhibition in the mechanism by which lower levels of consciousness are incorporated into higher levels.
The Nature of Primal Pain.
What does Janov mean by “primal pain”? He describes it as the pain which results when primal needs are not met. These primal needs may appear at first sight to be none other than the instinctual drives described by Freud, especially as Janov chose to use the term “primal” to describe his therapy. In Freudian thought the term “primal” is used in conjunction with the notion of primary repression, that is to say, with repression of the id. This, however, is not Janov’s intended meaning. He is not referring specifically to instinctual drives, but rather, to a biologically consonant system of consciousness, which may involve all three levels of consciousness as an integrated whole, and which seeks to fulfill basic biological needs. The system of fulfilling those real biological needs, whether at the instinctual stage or the higher ego stage, is termed by Janov, the real self. The system which suppresses the real self is called the unreal self. Primal pain is the overriding condition of the real self when it is suppressed by the unreal self. Thus the range covered by Freud’s notion of primary and secondary inhibition is spanned by Janov’s theory of tripartite consciousness. Where they differ is Janov’s emphasis on overwhelming primal pain as the immediate cause of repression.
We may note a certain element of confusion in Janov’s theory at this point. Is it Primal pain which is being repressed, or is it the real self? Primal pain after all, is only an element in the real self not the whole of it. The notion of repression of old primal pain emphasises the past, whereas the notion of repression of the real self emphasises the present and the future. This difference in emphasis affects one’s outlook and the colour of one’s experience.
The actualised real self would seem to be the same as Freud’s notion of a well adjusted ego which has successfully incorporated instinctual drives and needs. Janov, however, posits the notion of an immanent real self which, because it is repressed, is not actualised, but corresponds to the id’s drives towards satisfaction, and the ego’s wish to authentically incorporate those drives. The unreal self would then correspond to Freud’s notion of the neurotic ego which actively avoids incorporation of these drives, merely repressing them instead, together with its own immanent wish to express them. Because a number of the id’s component drives have not been incorporated into the unreal ego, and hence have not become its sub-systems, the id as a coherent whole remains very powerful in relation to the ego, and can burst out of the unreal self like an untamed animal. Within the context of historically authentic personal memories, in other words, within the framework provided by the clients’s ego, Primal therapy allows the painful recollection of deeply felt frustrated instinctual drives, realising that it is the fear of this which keeps repression in tact.
Unfortunately Primal therapy has tended to misrepresent this therapeutic event and conceptualised it as a necessary and long overdue release of primal pain. In early Primal theory, the neurotic’s accumulated pain was thought of as residing in a pool which required emptying. Though this pool of pain was understood to hold a high charge of disruptive energy, it was not described as a coherent system in the way that the Freudian id is. It was more like a library of painful memories which both the real and unreal selves continually referred to. Although each memory had great power, the pool was merely an aggregate of parts. This reflects Janov’s emphasis on specific pains as the immediate causes of repression, rather than Freud’s emphasis on the dynamic psychic structures of consciousness which are its general causes.
Even though Janov has, for many years, tried to reverse the attitude that Primal therapy is simply a form of catharsis, emphasising instead the process of reconnection and integration of forgotten experience, the very notion of unfelt feelings tends to suggest the goal of releasing past pain rather than undoing present fragmentedness. Ego psychology allows us to see clearly that the benefit of feeling remembered pain is not merely in its release, though that is in itself very beneficial, but, more importantly in the long term, in the recognition of the essential truth which the id is expressing, so that it may be properly incorporated into the ego. This process is not helped by Janov’s deliberate avoidance of ego-psychology, and yet it is obvious from his comments on the once fashionable rebirthing movement, that he regards the use of “primal” techniques outside of the ego-framework nurtured by Primal therapy, as highly dangerous. For Janov, the release of primal pain out of natural sequence is unlikely to be able to be integrated by the developing real self. This closely echoes the fear of Freudians who believe that untrammelled liberation of the id could fatally weaken the ego, threatening acute psychosis. However, the Freudian’s fear is that the client, faced with extreme difficulties in growth, may slide back to the pre-egoic id and become irretrievably absorbed by it, whereas Janov’s fear is that the intensity of early pain, if felt outside the context of one’s natural sequence of development, may be encountered as incomprehensible and overwhelming, thus overloading the normal modes of perception, and resulting in their disintegration. Janov's is a fear of intractable confusion and chaos, whereas Freud's is a fear of possession by a coherent and intelligent id.
We see then that Janov has shifted the focus away from Freud’s emphasis on the general conflict between the ego and the id, to the immediate cause of repression - overwhelming pain. In doing so, whatever problems may arise in taking such a stance, he has courageously exposed a common tendency in psychoanalytic thinking to cling to a general truth as a way of avoiding a specific one.
Deficiencies in Theory: Sublimation v Repression.
What tends to be obscured by psychoanalytic theory is the overwhelmingly painful character of frustrated need which necessitates repression. Freudian and neo-Freudian theory often becomes distracted by the problem of disruptive instincts and narcissistic yearnings, with the consequence that it misses the obvious importance of authentic expression and satisfaction of real need. In concrete terms, premature or inappropriate suppression of “disruptive” instincts translates into pain. This is what Janov’s theory accepts, and what primal people discover for themselves without the aid of an interpreter.
What tends to be obscured by Primal theory is that primitive instinctual drives are ultimately unacceptable both to the ego, and to other mature adults. This is even the case in relations between puppies and their mothers. The acquisition of teeth does not immediately prevent puppies from suckling. The feel of a wrathful nip from their mother does. Here the mother suppresses the puppies’ instinctual drives leaving them no option other than to use their newly acquired teeth to tackle solid food. This is an example of sublimation of the suckling instinct into the eating instinct. It is driven in part by the limitations of the mature adult, and in part by the developments taking place in the immature juvenile. The puppy’s merely having acquired teeth is not enough to allow further development. It also has to discover that it can and must use them to do something other than suckle. In fact, puppies explore their toothiness with great vigour, as any dog owner knows. Having acquired self-knowledge in this way the puppy would not be satisfied with a reversion back to suckling. To do so would require neglecting its newfound knowledge and would constitute a denial of the reality of its experience.
Because successful sublimation is possible in this case repression is not necessary. It is very different when a human infant cries for its mother but is ignored. Even now there are parents who still believe this is good for their children, believing it somehow or other toughens them up! The truth alas is far from this. It results in repression of the baby’s ability to express feeling, the result invariably being a lifelong loss of confidence which is difficult to overcome. In contrast, the healthy child, who, like the puppy, is naturally exuberant and willful, may cling to her proven power to elicit responses from her parents, even when this is annoying and unnecessary. When the parents become angry in this situation and chastise the child, this will not lead to repression, but rather, to respect for the parents’ limitations, even if this requires quite a protracted period of sparring. In this case sublimation will have taken place rather than repression.
Whereas psychoanalytic theory tends to prolong therapy by preventing analysands from entering into the depths of feeling which wait in desperation to be felt and appreciated, primal theory, by not utilising the Freudian understanding of sublimation, or transcendence as it is called in transpersonal psychology, tends to prolong therapy by keeping patients fixated on the therapeutic process itself as a substitute form of the immediacy typical of immature instinctual drives. From the psychoanalytic point of view this is indeed a sign that primal therapy can strengthen the id whilst retarding development of the ego.
Primal Theory as Dogma.
The validity of re-experiencing primal pain has been self-evident to many who have done so as well as to those who have witnessed it. But what of the circumstances where feeling primal pain is not valid but harmful? Can Primal theory accept the self-evidence of these cases? It is an undeniable fact that in the beginning, hopes for Primal therapy were highly optimistic, believing that effective therapy would be relatively short. As the years have gone by, experience has not fully borne out those early hopes. It is now generally recognised that therapy takes much longer than originally anticipated, although the need for a therapist diminishes as the client learns how to help herself. It is also recognised that the therapy can simply fail to help some people. The theoretical response to this has been of two types. The more traditional Primal theorists say that the problems have lain with the patients: they either lacked the commitment, were too damaged, or didn’t stay in therapy long enough. Less traditional theorists said: no, the theory and practice have not lived up to their promise and are inadequate and incomplete. Those on the outside wryly smiled and said: we told you so.
Primal Therapy in Context.
What we have seen is a general softening of attitudes in all but the most entrenched of theorists who either wholly accept the original primal paradigm, or totally reject it. In this softening up process the main concern has been not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Primal therapy is extraordinarily efficacious in many, many cases and has significantly empowered humankind. It just isn’t unlimited and doesn’t have all the answers. However, to say this is to flatly challenge Arthur Janov’s belief that Primal therapy cannot, and should not, be incorporated into other psychological systems. In my opinion that is precisely what is needed. Primal theory is a psychology of human pathology which must be integrated into a psychology of human normalcy. But because of its revolutionary perspective and its self- identification as vanguard of an entirely new form of consciousness, Primal theory has never acknowledged any model of normality outside of its own theoretical framework. I believe this has been an understandable but damaging mistake which, beyond a certain point, becomes little more than a stubborn form of arrogance. Primal therapy is not the answer to mankind’s problems. It is simply a highly effective therapy for people harbouring a lot of primal pain, whose only qualification to advise others on what is normal, is that they know a great deal about what is not. The capacity to feel belongs to the human species and beyond that to other sentient beings. It does not belong to Primal therapy.
Regarding Freud, it is not an either-or thing, where the unconscious must be either primal pain or instinctual drives. It can, indeed must, be both. When the pain of prematurely frustrated instinctual drives becomes unbearable, one way of alleviating it is by repressing or displacing those drives. Thus the unconscious contains both the drives and the pain of frustrating them. But, in addition to this, repression is merely an extreme form of inhibition. As Freud explains, instinctual drives must be inhibited and sublimated into higher levels of behaviour in the normal course of development. Not everything which is unconscious is the result of repression. Thus although Primal theory clarifies one aspect of inhibition, namely its potentially repressive character whose immediate cause is unbearable primal pain, it fails to elucidate its other crucial aspect, namely its normal role in the process of self-transcendence or sublimation. Futhermore, although Primal theory speaks of “first-”, “second-” and “third-line” consciousnesses, it does not properly consider them as separately coherent systems. Consequently it neglects to take seriously the possibility of an inherent dynamic conflict developing between them, as opposed to conflicts arising out of unfavourable environmental conditions. Overall, then, Primal theory builds selectively on Freud’s work rather than completely nullifying him, and should properly be regarded as a neo-Freudian theory.
Jung: The Inadequacy of Biological Materialism.
In the case of Jung the matter is quite different, and demonstrates a dangerous aspect of both Freudian and Primal theories. Jung’s influences differed to those of Freud, and disposed him to accepting at face value many of the mythical contents of his patients’ dreams aswell as their mid-life crises. Eventually he came to believe that there were archetypal ordering principles implicit in the universe which manifested in the human mind in the form of archetypal symbols. These symbols could take the form of figures in dreams, in art, or even in scientific theories. Both Freud and Janov deny the authenticity of these symbols maintaining that they are symbolic of instinctual drives or primal pain respectively, whilst accusing Jung of a quasi-mystical aberration from reality. Their denial, however, of both Jung’s theoretical acknowledgements, and of his patients’ experiences, is based on the flimsiest of reasons. In each case they choose adherence to their scientific prejudices rather than other peoples’ experience. If, of course, their scientific premises become obsolete, which sooner or later all scientific premises tend to do, then the damage done by their denial becomes immediately obvious. In their view religious and mythical symbols can invariably be reduced to a more fundamental level of reality, that of biological functioning. This type of thinking constitutes what we might designate biological materialism. Herein, it seems to me, lies a fault in Janov’s thought: it expresses a strongly reductionistic tendency, a tendency which had already been recognised in neurology by Gestaltists in the 1940s. Psychology tends to be reduced to biology, biology to chemistry, chemistry to physics, and so on, the assumption being that events occurring at the higher levels must be determined by events occurring at lower levels. Behind this assumption, however, is the further assumption that the lower we descend down the hierarchy the closer we get to the foundation of reality itself, an incontrovertible, fundamentally real, base, which determines everything that happens. Whilst this view may have had some merit in Freud’s day, it is anachronistic in the age of quantum mechanics and relativity theory. Quite simply, physics, the most respected of all sciences, has not only failed to discover any fundamental base, but has arrived at the conclusion that there isn’t one, at least not one which corresponds to any common sense idea of what that might be. Physics seems to present us with two options: endless flux, or absolute nothingness, neither of which conforms to the idea of an all-determining base! This leaves biological materialism inadvertently denying the whole of experienced reality in deference to a more fundamental hypothetical reality which is beyond experience!
In contrast, it was as a result of his deep appreciation of modern physics that Jung deliberately avoided anchoring his psychology to biological science at a time when the very foundations of science were being called into question. In the event, Jung’s psychology has turned out to be remarkably consistent with general systems theory and its growing understanding of chaotic attractors, which now prevails in many branches of science.
The Primacy of Experience: The Emergence of Image and the Beginning of Ego.
In experienced reality, as opposed to abstract reality, all we know is what we experience. Experience is our only basis. All theories and concepts are abstracted from that. To clearly understand this is to situate scientific empiricism in a more hermeneutical framework. We feel. We all know that. All of our knowledge of our world is felt as qualities of experience. As children our knowledge was at first very sensational. But as we grew up, playing and interacting with things, we were able to see more and more clearly the many facets of our experience. We began to recognise different qualities within things, and to be able to identify them. This type of knowledge involves images of the world which we are able to hold together in our minds. This ability to construct and retain images is not something we are born with but is a skill we develop as we grow. Before we develop that skill our experience is just a continuous stream of sensation and feeling, devoid of any separable images. Everything just flows into everything else. But after we learn to image, our experience begins to change. We begin to feel we are a separate being in a world of other separate beings. And on the basis of this capacity for perceptual differentiation of our experiential continuum, our organisation of our experience into an ego identity within a world of otherness has begun to take place. This mode of consciousness is taken for granted by both Freud and Janov as the norm for adult consciousness. However, the recognition that it is intrinsically problematic and capable of generating profound crises of identity in later life, is central to the transpersonal psychologies of Jung and Assagioli.
Anomalies of Normal Perception: Emptiness and Hopelessness.
At this level our thinking is inseparable from our sensing. Our sensing is intelligent and analytical. It is not, and never has been, pure and simple. Running through all of our experience is time. A thought or feeling may not seem to take up space but it does take up time. It lasts a while. Experience which doesn’t take up time is inconceivable. But there is a contradiction here. Something very strange. How, at this very instant, can we be aware of all the instants which led up to this one, and yet which no longer exist? What are we aware of if those moments have gone forever? All of our experience seems to take time and yet we perceive the whole span of time at this very moment. How can we perceive a span of time at a moment which is merely a coordinate in time and does not, in itself, occupy any span of time? These questions are easy to ask but very difficult to answer, and the difficulty has nothing to do with complicated thinking or being too “intellectual”. The difficulty lies at the very heart of that most down to earth aspect of experience - feeling. Within it there is a state of being into which all of our experience tends to slip. It is what Buddhists call emptiness and what mystics describe as psychological or worldly death. If we are unable to accept this it won’t be because we are too stupid to grasp a complex issue. The problem will be that we find it extremely difficult to let go of our habit of common sense perception and thinking. Because we expect things to be a certain way we ensure that our experience conforms to those expectations. Our feelings and sensations expect to be affected in a human way and so we experience a human environment. We do not experience reality as it actually is, nor are we able to.
The more we question our common sense view of our world the more it breaks down, leaving a gap at the heart of our experience. If we are unprepared for this we may cling to ordinariness in a desperate way, as if it might be submerged in a world of confusion which lies only a few thoughts away. People often become very angry when affected by such questions. Merely to ask them threatens one’s sense of place and the security which that affords. It isn’t immediately gratifying to ask such questions. The more we become aware of them the more they threaten to undermine the values we normally live for, replacing them with hopelessness and depression. It is tempting to seek concrete reasons to account for this change in consciousness. We may put the blame on childhood traumas or current injustices of some kind. We cannot understand where such extraordinarily powerful feelings have come from. We may try to cover the problem up by turning to new hobbies or pastimes. But in our hearts we know that we are avoiding the issue. We know something is terribly wrong but we don’t know what. No matter what we do we are continually drawn to this strange uncertainty at the centre of everything that we are.
Indivisibility as a Source of Terror.
Our sense of self is merely an act of perception. Before that there is just continuous experience with noone experiencing it. Now, in later life, this unity of experience has returned in its mature form. There is no seer and no seen - just the seeing. No thinker and no thought - just the thinking. Self-gratification has become impossible and all those attitudes which depend on rewards have been made redundant. Often people idealise the state of unity, imagining it to be blissful or enjoyable in some ordinary sense. The truth is quite different. This “bliss” devours our identification with our ego, the self we have usually cherished for a lifetime. It’s not that the ego is destroyed, but that it becomes completely transparent and empty. We experience very clearly the absence of what we have always felt to be our self. This is why in Buddhist and Hindu iconography absolute reality is often depicted in the form of hideous, blood curdling deities, draped in human skins, and adorned with necklaces of bones and skulls. They are conveying with perfect clarity, the full emotional price of realising the true indivisible nature of reality. Because this indivisibility is the truth, our egos are attracted to these symbols like moths to naked flames in the night. But unlike these moths which are burnt up in a moment, our egos are eviscerated and drained of their lifeblood while still continuing to function. If we are unable to surrender our attachment to them then we suffer in a most appalling way. We feel that we are being eviscerated and drained of our lifeblood. We descend into a hellish world of anxiety and paranoia from which there is not the slightest chance of escape.
Stages of Ego-Development: The Crystallisation of Fear and Desire.
How we accept or reject our embeddedness in a greater reality depends on the stage of ego-development we have attained. Both Freudians and Jungians have studied ego-development exhaustively and outlined the different characteristics of each stage. This work has been presented with great skill and accessibility by Ken Wilber in his book “The Atman Project”. The general thrust of this work indicates that the direction of the infantile ego is towards greater and greater cognitive differentiation of both itself and its world. This is its authentic self-nature at this stage of development and if frustrated it will remain immature, trapped in a pre-personal, pre-egoic realm in which it no longer quite belongs, and dominated by waves of feeling, like a cork tossed around on a great sea. Originally, these feelings may have been blissful or intensely painful, but apart from these qualities there was nothing else. There was no ego to form an opinion about them. They just happened. But from this undifferentiated oneness, a primitive sense of self emerged. This was formed out of memories of the organism-environment relationship and was the beginning of that psychological construct which Freud called the ego, and which now feels so helpless. Once the sense of self has emerged, true fear and desire, as distinct from pain and pleasure, become possible. Much of psychoanalytical study involves discovering the different forms of fear and desire which correspond to the different stages of ego-development.
Dynamic Tension: Fear and Desire v Openness.
Whereas pain and pleasure are organismic states, fear and desire are ego states. The ego though fundamentally conditioned by organismic states, is also, and perhaps more so, conditioned by its own fears and desires. It avoids what it fears and seeks out what it desires, thus controlling its environmental influences rather than leaving them to chance. However, it fears or desires what it knows, and what it knows is determined by its experience. In order to enlarge its knowledge it must remain open to new experience. And so, openness stands in opposition to both fear and desire in the developing ego. Were it not so, ego-development, together with its fears and desires, would not be possible. However, the ego, having sensed itself as something different from its environment, denies openness in the very act of self-differentiation. The creation of a stable self-image tends to deny the openness of being. Openness is thus seen as accidental to the self, an intrusion which enters from the outside. The possibility of a catastrophic intrusion is thus one of the first all-encompassing terrors to crystallise in the infant ego-mind. It arises as a logical correlate of ego-differentiation and requires no external cause for its appearance. This great fear drives its behaviour, turning it towards the breast, or into the arms of its parents where it feels safe and protected. Its need to be held in this way is not an organismic need but an ego need, born out of fear and desire. This is obviously not to deny genuine need, but rather to emphasise that the organic needs for food, warmth, and so on are, from the very beginning, mediated by an ego which generates feelings and emotions whose meanings are essentially psychological, not biological. This is an insight which Janov foregoes by spurning ego-psychology. For the ego, the organic needs are a psychological issue. To fail to acknowledge this is to grossly oversimplify the actual situation.
Primal Theory and Ego-Psychology: The need for a New Explanatory Model.
From this point of view Primal theory is deficient. It describes two dynamically opposed systems: the real self, and the unreal self. The real self is said to authentically express primal needs, whereas the unreal self inhibits expression of these needs, expressing instead the wishes of parents or others who stand in the way of such open expression. In this model the real self is little more than a translator of biological needs, and the unreal self a scheming trickster, spawned by the real self in order to achieve the aim which simple translation has failed to achieve. Ego-psychology, whether in its Freudian or Jungian forms, traces out a far more complex situation than this, which Primal theory does not address. The whole issue of image-formation and its problematic perceptual consequences, whether in early life or later life, is not considered in Primal theory, even though those consequences, if they are real, must exist for everyone. If we are inclined to accept ego-psychology, however, this does not mean that Primal therapy should be rejected outright. It means that we must construct a new theoretical model which takes ego-psychology into account. Central to this model must be the relationship between pain and fear, between pleasure and desire, between being and self-image, between separateness and indivisibility.
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15 July 1997