Comments and Criticisms

To the Editors:

Arthur Janov's primal therapy seems to be largely ignored by our practicing colleagues. One glance at the cover of his "Primal Scream, " which claims to be "the cure for neurosis, " seems to have been sufficient to put off most serious practitioners. They realize too well, after years of low-yield toil, that there are no panaceas in psychotherapy. Yet, among youth particularly, Janov is riding a powerful ground swell of admiration, as he provokes increasingly intense distrust among therapists of all persuasions.

It is conceivable that Janov has been beguiled by his own initial success just as Freud had been for several years when he adopted Breuer's "cathartic" therapy. He also believed then, that he and Breuer had a "cure for the hysterias." His increased disillusionment over psychoanalysis is now known historically. Indeed, his therapeutic despair (and perhaps, his cancer) led him to posit an intractable "death-instinct" as the basis for the "negative therapeutic reaction." Janov's patient acceptance and rejection policies may similarly contribute to his early successes just as Freud's patient-load of hysterics contributed to the success of his cathartic methods. Yet, the possibility exists that Janov's therapy may constitute an important contribution of wide-range applicability. His ideas and techniques would seem to deserve open-minded examination before they are derided and rejected.

Like Freud (and Sullivan, especially), Janov believes that the core of neurosis is to be sought in the earliest mother-child relationship. Like Ferenczi, Reich, and Perls, he emphasizes the patient's need for intensive experience instead of intellectual reeducation in therapy. Nor does he believe that dimly recalled experiences or the therapist's reconstructions of the past have much therapeutic efficiency. The patient's last experience, not the therapist's ideas, are required. Consequently, he encourages the patient towards a cathartic experience in which