Primal therapy and religion

by Bruce Wilson

A tip of the hat to David Mitchel Stow for his excellent post on primal pain, religion, forgiveness, and the essence of true religion versus the stuff that merely kills pain. Mitch has a way of eloquently expressing these topics so I’ve decided to reproduce some excerpts here.

“Primal Therapy, correctly done, sheds light on social mythologies and this itself is a form of evidence for its validity. Improperly done, Primal Therapy, is no more than what the field of psychology has become: our state religion. State religions enslave, that’s why the early founders of the United States thought it should be kept separate from government.”

“Religions are pain killers based on belief systems that differ, and when they contact opposing belief systems their efficacy for dealing with pain is weakened. When this happens the members feel as if their “security” and possibly their “life” is threatened. War can easily break out when this occurs.”

“When people say primal therapy is revolutionary there is a reason for that. Love and sanity are indeed revolutionary concepts in this world, and revolutionaries like Jesus seemed to have recognised this fact.”

“Mythology can’t be accurately interpreted unless we get real with the pain and struggle for survival that human beings, real human beings, have experienced.”

“Hate is not a family value, real forgiveness and repentance is. How do we come to really forgive and repent? We have to feel what it is we are forgiving and repenting from. Make sense? Welcome to the enlightenment of Janovian Primal Therapy.”

“Art is very inspiring, and that is not because he abuses charismatic abilities, but because he has seen a deep core reality in our human experience and knows we must take action.”

Good stuff, Mitch. You can read more on his blog.

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2 Replies to “Primal therapy and religion”

  1. http://optimisticintegration.com/wordpress/?p=100

    This is the link to the post here, my apologies for changing optimisticintelligence.com, but http://optimisticintegration.com/ has all its posts. So you can get the entire post at the above location, and even do a search for more on this topic there.

    As always I am so impressed with the tremendous writing of Bruce and Peter, they remind me of the story of David slaying the Giant, and in this case it is the giant which might be called ‘the flat earth misconceptions of our age’. Old science never yields rapidly to new discoveries, especially when the new discoveries or insights embarrass those holding onto the old scientific efforts. Bruce never detracts from the value of old views but he never retreats from new and clearer visions. Sometimes its easy to see error when you were never trained to believe in it. Both Bruce and Peter were never so trained, and yet their grasp of the old views psychology, as to how they fail, is remarkable, and again, perhaps because these two particular scientific objective minds aren’t biased and making their money off of old approaches. They are gentlemen to a fault and give every errant view its proper respect as an attempt at the truth. Yet, my respect for them comes from their unerring knack for proper perspectives regarding psychosocial issues of our times.

  2. A more thorough description of my positions Bruce are found on my new site http://comfortyoga.com/ It is my belief that rational comfort from enough perspectives defines discomfort and thwarts defenses against feeling if applied in the space of an hour and results will show up usually in the space of 2 or 3 hours. Where you might disagree is my replacement of the two week isolation with stimulation of the first line whenever needed to help break up defenses in those heavily defended. I believe in self help for those able to use it, but I recognize the need for professional therapists to handle the first line feelings and to shorten the time needed to do this feeling work. Please analyze the site Bruce when you can. This also speaks to a new rational spirituality Peter. Consider this site and I think that a healthy dialog concerning such approaches is welcome, certainly on my site. Criticisms in comments there if from either of you or Art, will not be deleted, nor any truly scientifically based disagreements.

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