- The Drama of the Gifted Child, (1978, revised in 1995)
- Prisoners of Childhood (1981)
- For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (1983)
- Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child (1984)
- Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries
- The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness
- Pictures of a Childhood: Sixty-six Watercolors and an Essay
- Paths of Life: Seven Scenarios (1998)
- Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth
- The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness (2001)
- The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting (2005)
- Free From Lies: Discovering Your True Needs (2009)

http://groups.google.com/group/realpsychohistory?hl=en
http://lists.topica.com/lists/psychohistory/read?sort=d&start=0

- The History of Childhood (1974)
- A Bibliography of Psychohistory (1975)
- The New Psychohistory (1975)
- Jimmy Carter and American Fantasy (1977)
- Foundations of Psychohistory (1982)
- Reagan’s America (1984)
- The Emotional Life of Nations (2002)
- The Origins of War in Child Abuse (2010)
http://www.freedomainradio.com/FreeBooks/psychohistory.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB3CHwRZKxE

Humanistic psychohistory (2001-2005)
http://lists.topica.com/lists/PhLeftReader/read?start=0&sort=a

http://www.arthurjanov.com
- The Primal Scream (1970, 1999)
- The Anatomy of Mental Illness (1971)
- The Primal Revolution: Toward a Real World (1972)
- The Feeling Child (1973)
- Primal Man: The New Consciousness (1976)
- Prisoners of Pain (1980)
- Imprints: The Lifelong Effects of the Birth Experience (1984)
- New Primal Scream: Primal Therapy 20 Years on (1992)
- Why You Get Sick and How You Get Well: The Healing Power of Feelings (1996)
- The Biology of Love (2000)
- Grand Delusions: Psychotherapies Without Feeling (2005, online)
- Sexualité et subconscient : Perversions et déviances de la libido (2006)
- Primal Healing: Access the Incredible Power of Feelings to Improve Your Health (2006)
- The Janov Solution: Lifting Depression Through Primal Therapy (2007)

- De Stem van het Jonge Kind. Over de affectieve rechten van het prenatale en jonge kind (1997)
- Het Miskende Kind in Onszelf. Invloeden van de kindertijd op het latere leven (2001)
- De Mythe van de Gelukkige Kindertijd. Zoektocht naar het miskende kind in onszelf (2006)
The Misrecognized Child in Ourselves (PDF)
Caesarean birth: Psychological aspects in babies (PDF)

- Screams From Childhood (2004)

- Bradshaw On: The Family (1986, 1996)
- Bradshaw On: Healing the Shame that Binds You (1988)
- Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child (1990)
- Creating Love (1992)
- Family Secrets (1995)
- Reclaiming Virtue: How To Develop The Moral Intelligence to Do The Right Thing At The Right Time For the Right Reason (2008)

- Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families (1987)
- A Gift to Myself: A Personal Guide to Healing My Child Within (1990)
- Co-Dependence: Healing the Human Condition (1991)
- Boundaries and Relationships: Knowing, Protecting, and Enjoying the Self (1994)
- Memory and Abuse: Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma (1995)
- The Truth About Depression: Choices for Healing (2003)
- Misinformation Concerning Child Sexual Abuse and Adult Survivors (2002)
- My Recovery: A Personal Plan for Healing (2003)
- The Truth About Mental Illness: Choices for Healing (2004)
- The Power of Humility: Choosing Peace Over Conflict in Relationships (2006)

http://www.redirectingselftherapy.com
The Biology of Emotions: Self-help for Anxiety and Depression (PDF) - In 23 languages

- Intimate Violence: The Causes and consequences of Abuse in the American Family (1988)
- Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Children (1994, 2001)
- Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family (2006)

- Cure by Crying: How to Cure Your Own, Depression, Nervousness, Headaches, Violent Temper, Insomnia, Marital Problems, Addictions by Uncovering Your Repressed Memories (1997)
-Review: http://primal-page.com/crycure.htm

- Betrayal of Innocence (1978, 1988)
- Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You (1998)
- Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (1990, 2001)

- Alice Miller: Discoveries and Contradictions (2008)
- Beyond Medication: Therapeutic Engagement and the Recovery from Psychosis (with David Garfield) (2008)
- Take These Broken Wings (documentary) (2008)
- From Trauma to Self Enlightenment: Self-Therapy in Twelve Steps (2009)
- Toward Truth: A Psychological Guide to Enlightenment (2010)
- A Way Out of Madness: Dealing with Your Family After You've Been Diagnosed with a Psychiatric Disorder (with Matthew Morrissey) (2010)

Youtube Video Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/dmackler58

- The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal (2009)
- The Franklin Scandal (2010)

- The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1961)
- The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1970)
- The Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Unraveling as Craziness, Rhetoric, and Oppression (1978)
- Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted (1996)
- Psychiatry: The Science of Lies (2008)

"Psychiatry as an Arm of the State"; Lew Rockwell show podcast, Nov 19, 2008

http://www.empathictherapy.org

- Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock, and Biochemical Theories of the "New Psychiatry" (1991)
- Beyond Conflict: From Self-Help and Psychotherapy to Peacemaking (1992)
- Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD. Revised (2001)
- The Heart of Being Helpful: Empathy and the Creation of a Healing Presence (2006)

- Making Sense of Suffering: The Healing Confrontation with Your Own Past (1994)

- The Assault on Truth :Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory (1985)
- A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality, and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century (1986)
- Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing (1988, 1993)
- Final Analysis: the Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst (1991)

- The First Relationship: Infant and Mother (1977, 2002, 2004)
- The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Development (1985, 1998, 2000)
- Diary of a Baby: What Your Child Sees, Feels, And Experiences (1990)
- Motherhood Constellation: A Unified View of Parent-Infant Psychotherapy (1995)
- Birth of a Mother: How the Experience of Motherhood Changes You for Ever (1998)
- The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life (2004)

- Birth Without Violence (1975, 2009)
- Loving Hands: The Traditional Art of Baby Massage (1976)
- Inner Beauty, Inner Light (1978)
- Birth Without Violence (2008)
- The Art of Giving Birth (2009)

- The Problem Family (1949)
- The Free Child (1953)
- Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing (1960, 1995)
- Children's Rights: Toward the Liberation of the Child (1971)

- The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life (2009)
- How Babies Think: The Science of Childhood (2001)
- The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind (2000)
- Words, Thoughts, and Theories (Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change) (1998)

- The Continuum Concept: In Search Of Happiness Lost (1986)

- The Language of the Body (1958)
- Love and Orgasm (1965)
- The Betrayal of the Body (1967)
- Pleasure (1970)
- Bioenergetics (1976)
- Depression and the Body: The Biological Basis of Faith and Reality (1977)
- The Way to Vibrant Health: A Manual of Bioenergetic Exercises, co-author Leslie Lowen (1977)
- Fear of Life (1980)
- Narcissism: Denial of the True Self (1984)
- Love, Sex and Your Heart (1988)
- The Spirituality of the Body (1990)
- Joy (1995)
- Honoring the Body: The Autobiography of Alexander Lowen (2004)
- The Voice of the Body (2005)

- Father-Daughter Incest (1981, 2001)
- Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (1992, 1997)

- Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family (1973)
- The Story of Ruth (1981)

- Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation (1991)
- Father, Don't You See I`m Burning?: Reflections on Sex, Narcissism, Symbolism, and Murder: From Everything to Nothing (1991)
- The Boy Will Come to Nothing!: Freud`s Ego Ideal and Freud as Ego Ideal (1993)
- Is There Life Without Mother? Psychoanalysis, Biography, Creativity (2000)
- Soul Murder Revisited: Thoughts about Therapy, Hate, Love, and Memory (2000)
- Haunted by Parents (2007)

- Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process (1994)
- Psychoanalytic Case Formulation (1999)
- Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner's Guide (2004)

- Angry Adolescents (1969)
- Religious Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence (1968)
- Show Me Yours: Children Talking About Sex (1988)
- Show Me Yours: Understanding Children's Sexuality (1988)
- Questioning Circumcision: A Jewish Perspective (1997)
- Circumcision, The Hidden Trauma: How an American Cultural Practice Affects Infants and Ultimately Us All (1997)

Case Study: Nathan (page 120 - 122)

I've been on edge lately. Actually, I've been losing it really, but with good reason. Everyone is conspiring against me, even the therapists. That is how I went into my session on Tuesday. So you think I'm smoking dope again, and you told all the other therapists and everyone now hates me. Valerie (my therapist) didn't respond much, except to say, "How does that make you feel?" I'm always getting screwed; somebody is always out to get me. I'm always getting blamed for something, and everyone always ends up hating me for some reason or another. As I'm saying this, I start to feel a knot of tension in my stomach and a deep sadness. My eyes start to get blurry, and it's hard for me to talk. What's happening? Valerie says that I feel that I'm not good enough, I can't do enough, and nothing I do will ever be enough! I can't please everyone. I can't be perfect! I start to break down and cry.
The feeling keeps penetrating and my crying becomes serious. I lose all sense of time, and then out of the blue, this flashback pops into my head. I'm in high school during computer class hiding my face in my arms and pretending to sleep while everyone else is busy doing their work. I was miserable back then, and I would usually spend my days in class sleeping or pretending to sleep. The teacher called me up to her desk, and I was thinking, "Oh shit, I'm in trouble again," or maybe she was going to ask me if something's wrong. That's what I wanted her to say: "Is something wrong Nathan? What's the matter? Can I help you? You can talk to me, I'll listen." But no, she asked me some stupid question about my homework, I answered and went back to my desk to sleep.
Now the tears are pouring because nobody can see how much I hurt, nobody wants to help me, nobody cares, and I feel worthless! My muscles start to clench and I start to cough. I cough and cough and cough, to the point where it feels like I'm going to vomit. But I don't. A pressure seems to release after these coughing fits and I just lay there limp and flooded with tears. I calm down a bit and Valerie says, "Ask for help."
"No, I don't want to!"
"Ask."
"No, I don't want to; they should have been able to tell. They should have been able to see how much pain I was in, how hurt I was."
"Ask."
"Help me! Please help me! I need help!" And I'm back in it, full blown crying, spasms, muscles tensing up, and coughing. It goes on like this until I remember that phone call I made.
Just a few days ago, on Mother's Day, when out of guilt more than anything, I called my mom. "Happy Mother's Day," I said. But all heard back was how well my brother is doing. He just bought a new motorcycle, he just got a new dog, he just did this, he just did that. And I feel like shit, because my life is shit, and I can't get it together. She just keeps rubbing it in, making me feel worthless. Nothing I do is good enough. I can't do anything right; I'm such a disappointment! Here come the tears again. I realize that these present-day feelings stem from this. These memories of being neglected and manipulated all my life. But not only that, as the session winds down, my therapist tells me that she didn't think I was smoking dope, and she didn't tell the other therapists anything like that. It was all in my head! The animosity isn't real, the conspiracy isn't real, everyone against me isn't real. It was all just a feeling, me acting out a feeling. And for me that is the hardest thing to take. Realizing that my feeling's distort reality so much that I can't even tell what is real anymore, and then realizing that I have been doing that my entire life. Repeating this vicious cycle over and over and over. I think of how much time I've wasted chasing these false ideas. All the untrue things my feelings led me to believe and how it has made my life a complete mess.
But I feel relieved as the session ends, like some weight has just been lifted. And that is what makes this therapy so amazing. It is what makes these therapists so amazing. They are able to pull these things out of you, things you didn't even know were there and not only recognize them but feel them so you can change them and rebuild your life, a real life.

Case Study: Daryl—Three Non-Feeling Therapies

In cognitive behavioral therapy, the therapist focused almost exclusively on asking me to "change my negative thoughts" to more positive thoughts. For example, I was feeling very negative toward myself at the time this therapy occurred, and I would find this kind of self-talk happening within myself: "I'm a failure in my career." The therapist would ask me to "re-word" this statement to myself to say, "I'm not succeeding in my career at the present time." Well, this did not help at all. In fact, I simply got all jumbled in a lot of mechanistic ways of trying to handle internal problems that only ended in frustration and discouragement.

Another key approach of this cognitive behavioral therapist was to present me with a list of 12 "should" statements that people tend to use. Then, she would ask me to repeat the statement without using the word "should." For example, one of the original statements might have been, "I should be more competent." She would ask me to re-phrase this to say, "I am competent." Of course, this did not help at all because I did not, in fact, become any more competent by simply saying, "I am competent. " Much of her approach revolved around convincing me of the irrationality of my behavior in using "should" statements. To a great extent, she provided me with a list of rules and asked me to obey those rules. This approach completely ignored the feelings below the surface that were driving me to feel what I felt and, therefore, to say what I would say. Her approach did not take into account the principle of repression.

This therapist became very frustrated working with me. In fact, she discounted and denied the role of feelings in the therapeutic process. I reacted to her approach by being frustrated, discouraged, and disillusioned because her approach did not work for me.

In Jungian therapy, the therapist introduced me to the classical concepts within Jungian psychology: archetypes, anima, animus, collective unconscious, persona, shadow, active imagination, guided imagery, the Self, and interpretation of dreams. He also tried to stay within the classical Jungian psychological model in his therapeutic approach with me. He was a very intellectual person himself, and my gaining an understanding of these primary concepts was important to him. Therefore, he spent a lot of time with me in simply helping me to understand all of these Jungian terms and concepts. He did acknowledge and recognize the principle of repression, and he said that those things that have been repressed are now in "your shadow." His whole approach resulted in one prerequisite to healing on the part of the patient: the patient must have an understanding of these terms, concepts, and principles. His premise was simple: once the patient gains an understanding of her/his problem and these Jungian concepts, healing will naturally occur. So, understanding automatically brings healing.

But, in my case, understanding did not bring healing. Understanding brought mental gymnastics. The process of gaining an intellectual understanding brought a false illusion of healing. I frequently said to myself, "Now that I have an intellectual (intelligent) understanding of what the problems are within me, I will be cured. I had this belief over and over, but it never did bring about true healing. Instead, it brought about a temporary false sense of confidence that "now I've got the problem nailed down, I will be okay."

The Jungian approach helped only temporarily and then, only slightly. However, each time I came to understand the problem, I truly thought that I would be cured. It never happened. As a result I became discouraged and disillusioned. In fact, the process of intellectualizing actually slowed down the healing process in that it covered over the real feelings that needed to be felt.

In Gestalt therapy, the therapist gave an initial impression that feelings would play a primary role in my therapy. In fact, they never did. Gestalt therapy, for me, ended up somewhere in between cognitive behavioral and Jungian therapy. My Gestalt therapist made use of role playing as a way of trying to help me gain insights into my behavior. At times, she would say, "I want you to play your father and use this scenario." At other times, she would ask me to play the role of the boss with whom I was having difficulty at that particular time. In all cases, the role-playing scenarios did nothing to bring about healing. The therapist was very impressed with her approach and what she thought was happening, but I was not experiencing anything significant in terms of real progress. Therefore, over a period of six months to a year, I became discouraged and disillusioned with the process. In fact, I lost confidence in this particular approach as well as in the therapist. She sensed my frustration and this caused friction in our relationship. Eventually, I discontinued my therapy with this therapist.

In conclusion, let me comment on what I see as the need for patients to evaluate and provide feedback to the therapist. It would be so simple for therapists of all psychological approaches to develop an evaluation/feedback form in order to seek feedback on how the therapeutic process is going. What the therapist thinks is occurring might not be the case at all.

Feeling better is fine. But we must keep in mind that the caring we get now cannot make up for the lack of it when it was critical. The critical period has passed. If it hadn't, then the doctor's caring would heal us. Because it is after the critical period, it is only palliative. It may help stabilize a shaky defense system, but it never eradicates need. I will repeat ad nauseam: we cannot love neurosis away. Even if we could resurrect Momma and have her kiss and hug her grown-up child, no amount of love in the present can reverse the damage. That is why a kindly therapist, who is concerned and interested, cannot re-establish equilibrium in his patient. No amount of his caring and insights will induce any profound change. No psychotherapy can alter those needs, nor can the drug-taking or other act-outs they drive, once they are sealed in.
More broadly, we must keep in mind the futility of using ideas to treat the effects of deeply ingrained traumas. As we shall see, it is not possible to use ideas and thinking processes, which literally came along millions of years later in the evolution of brain development, to affect what is lower in the brain and evolved millions of years earlier. (page 52)

No amount of fulfilment later on can replace an early deficit of love and caring. This means that no amount of caring by a therapist can produce any profound change in the patient. She is long past her critical period. To repeat: you cannot love neurosis away. Of course, caring in the present can act as a holding action, keeping the real deprivation at bay for a short time; it tranquilizes but cannot be curative. And it has to be tranquilized all of the time lest the pain surge forth. That is why many patients seek conventional therapy ad infinitum. (page 109)

There is a book called The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. (4) Dr. Pinker is a well-known writer on matters of the brain. His specialty is cognitive neuroscience. ("Cognitive neuroscience" seems to be one more oxymoron. If neuroscience limits itself to the study of the thinking brain, the rest of the central nervous system and its interrelationships with the thinking area are likely to be ignored.) Pinker claims throughout his work that nurture, the environment, is never a match for nature—what we inherit. He points out that criminals are rarely rehabilitated, which is proof, he believes, that criminal tendencies must be inherited. What he does not consider is first, the impact of early life shaping future criminals, and second, that perhaps our treatment of criminals is what is wrong, particularly when he is an advocate of the cognitive approach, which is bound to fail with criminals. The logic then continues: because we cannot make the criminal well, it must be because it is an inherited tendency. Naturally, this reasoning doesn't put his therapeutic approach into question. Few, if any, professionals have seen the depths of the unconscious and observed the pain imprinted there. Therefore, they cannot know what nurture really is and what it can do to us. This is doubly true when the months of gestation and the first months of infancy are ignored. Because there is hardly any cognition going on, to speak of, in the first three years of life, when cognition is the focus, one is bound to ignore the most crucial formative times in life. (page 129/130)

I must hasten to add a caveat here. Nearly every cognitive/insight talk therapy fills the needs of the patient symbolically. The patient is acting neurotically in the hope of getting well. She is being a good, smart, helpful patient. The therapist is focusing only on her. How long has it been since someone paid exclusive attention to her? And for an hour! Is it any wonder that her therapy is addicting; the insights are a small adjunct to it all. The attention is preponderant. I point out elsewhere that the choice of the therapy is often another act-out. The patient is going back for love, caring, and approval. She gets it and it is another symbolic act, and therefore her neurosis is reinforced. The therapist gives us exactly what we needed from our parents; it is, unfortunately, 20 or 30 years too late. It is a bottomless pit that no one can fill. (page 135)

Constantly being on the move is a good example of this act-out; a mad flight from the feeling, just as others who feel as if they are failures are in a desperate search to try to feel like a winner. As I have noted, the definition of an act-out is behaving out of unfulfilled needs. Unfulfilled needs start the accelerator going. Even in depression, which looks like total lethargy and passivity, there is a highly active system. (page 137)

It is easy to become entangled in a mesh of thoughts that bind us, the more labyrinthine the better—hence the attraction of insight therapy. One is now a captive of those beliefs, and he enters into his slavery willingly, because this slavery is also an important defense. If fascism were ever to come to America, it would no doubt come by popular vote not by autocratic edict. We would slip into unquestioning obedience to the leader gladly, for it would relieve us of having to think for ourselves. He would protect us from the evil "out there." I am reminded of those who dive for sharks in steel cages. They have no freedom of movement but it is a fact that the sharks cannot get to them. Their steel cage is their defense and their prison. Chemical prisons are just as strong as those steel ones. They allow for few alternatives in behavior. Beliefs are the psychic equivalent of repression. We can rechannel the flow but we will not change the volcanic activity. We can cap the explosion with ideas, but there is always a danger of another eruption; sometimes it is in the form of a seizure, other times it is found in being seized by a sudden realization—finding God and being born again. (page 178)

In rebirthing or LSD therapy, the patient is plunged into early remote pains; too often the result is incipient or transient psychosis. One of our patients went to a weekend meditation group that practiced deep breathing. (This was without our knowledge. It is forbidden in our therapy, for obvious reasons.) He came back to us in pieces, totally symbolic, speaking of cosmic forces and past lives. That deep breathing weakened his defenses and opened the gates artificially. The overload threw him into symbolism as the frontal cortex struggled to make sense out of liberated pains that were not ready to be felt and integrated. (page 183)

If we follow evolution and allow feeling before ideas in psychotherapy, then we cannot go wrong. If we defy evolution, and use ideas before feelings, then we must, perforce, go wrong. The same is true for those rebirthers who decide to plunge patients into remote and devastating pains right away in psychotherapy. There is no integration because the valence is so heavy and the pains are thrown up out of sequence. The same is true for those who use drugs and hallucinogens to get to deep early feelings. The system cannot possibly integrate (even though often the patient and therapist are convinced that progress has taken place). Integration means a slow descent from the present and top level prefrontal cortex to lower limbic/feeling areas and finally to the deeply rooted and engraved imprints around birth and infancy. We need to prepare the soil for heavy pains. When they intrude suddenly into the top level, there is of necessity a disintegration taking place. We see this in our vital sign research where signs go up and then down sporadically without any cohesion to them. They tell us there is no integration. (page 205)

A person is suspicious of being hurt by others because he was hurt so badly by insensitive parents; in Dan's case, a cruel mother. He projected this fear onto others who he thought wanted to hurt him. Dan was slightly paranoid at the start of therapy, questioning even the nice things he would hear. "Did you really mean it? I thought you were putting me on." His suspicions went from the personal and idiosyncratic (his mother in the past), to the general (everyone else in the present). "They" are trying to hurt me. When we took Dan back from the universal "they" and transformed it into a personal "me," the paranoid ideas were diminished or eliminated. The general had become the particular, which then produced a general law. (page 211)

If the therapist has the need to be helpful and get "love" from the patient, he can act this out in therapy. I remember feeling my need to become a therapist and be helpful, trying symbolically to help my mentally ill mother to get well and be a real mother. No one is exempt from symbolic behavior. And it is certainly more comfortable for a patient to act out his needs and get them fulfilled (symbolically) in therapy, and imagine he is getting somewhere, than to feel the pain of lack of fulfillment. It is understandable that the idea of lying on a matted floor crying and screaming doesn't appeal to some. Pain is not always an enticing prospect. Thus, the cognitive/insight therapist can be similarly deceived and entangled in the same delusion as his patient: both getting love for being smart. It is a mutually deceptive unconscious pact. (page 227)

Religion puts a moral slant on our hidden "evil" forces, but it amounts to the same thing. Psychology becomes religion by another name. If not, what are those impulses? Where do they come from? Are they immutable forces that cannot be changed? If not, how do we change them? Their leitmotif is that demons live inside of us that shall remain unalterable and nameless, a kind of genetic evil. We are born with it, and that is that. Here is where the cognitivists join the Freudians, who join the Jungians, who join the priests in thinking our main job is to hold down these dark, evil shadow forces. The reason that so many psychologists consider those negative forces immutable is that not having deep access, there is truly no way to change them, hence they are immutable. This is an example of circular logic. (page 228/229)

The following are two patients with two different kinds of compulsions. The first, a woman who must hang all her shirts in the same direction. She gets very nervous if one shirt isn't hanging right. The insight in her feeling was, "I could never get it right. Nothing I could do would make my parents say, 'You've done a good job.'" As it is with her shirts, she had to check over and over again because she still felt she didn't get it right. She was acting out symbolically, "Everything I do is wrong. Nothing I can do will make them approve and love me." Another patient is addicted to video games. It is not something he just plays; he is addicted and must do it. Why? To feel like a winner. No matter how many times he won, however, he still felt like a loser, something his father called him constantly. He was trying to shake that feeling, but never could. In life he felt like a failure; he didn't know what else to do to get rid of that feeling. He chose, as in every neurosis, a symbolic channel. Until he felt in a session over and over again, "I'm not a failure, Daddy. Say I'm good— just once!" Feeling that stopped the act-out; he had to feel that many times. (page 252)

I believe that the war on drugs is part of the overall suppression that occurs in a neurotic society. The first reflex of unreal systems, both personal and social, against change is suppression. Drugs that aid suppression, which allow for accommodation to a suppressive mode of life, are considered 'safe'. Drugs (like people) that tend towards liberation, towards feeling and towards acute insights, are the threat. There is much more evidence of the harm of cigarettes, evi­dence that indicates the ingestion of the nicotine drug over a period of time can be fatal. There is far less evidence that marijuana causes any harm. Why, then, do users of marijuana go to jail? Why is it all right for a person to get smashed on alcohol, endanger lives while drunk driving, and only have a driver's license suspended, while a person in possession of LSD can go to prison, for decades in some cases. I don't think that these are fortuitous events. They are the result of living in a suppressive society where feelings themselves become a threat. Indeed, feeling people would not accommodate to an unreal society, nor would they go out and kill their fellow men. Feeling people are indeed the threat to the business-as-usual group. (Page 112)

When I'm feeling shitty, I can either not like me and try to figure out what's wrong with me, and all the shit I should go through to get me to like me, or I can just feel the pain. Many times I choose the mind trip, and cover up the pain. It hurts, dammit! I don't want to feel it all the time. But always, sooner or later, the 'thinking it out' trip becomes ridiculous, and my Primals begin. (Page 136)

Give a depressive a new outlet, a new job, a party, or a chance to go shopping, and all of the inner-directed pressure now pours out in manic activity. He will literally 'throw himself' into his work. He will be 'happy' for those moments when his work will make him happy. What has really happenedis that he has found an outlet for tension - an outlet that continues to hide the Primal sadness. But great r­elease of tension feels like happiness for the neurotic, and the relief feels better than that inner-pressured feeling that accompanies depression. So we can see that some of us shut down early in life and, sans outlets, become 'dead' and depressed. Others shut down and 'act' alive. If being the 'happy clown' pleases one's parents, then the act will continue. The child will still be sad because he could not be himself. If there was no way to please, if one was disliked, sup­pressed, and rejected at every turn, then deadness and depression will result. Take away the 'happy clown's' chances to perform, and the lurking sadness will begin to ascend. (Page 142)

Neurotic societies further the dichotomy between the mental and the physical. There are mental workers and physical ones (white-collar and blue-collar workers). In the popular mythology, labourers aren't supposed to think or use big words, and intellectuals do not perform physical labour. Both, being split, may be exploited so that their brains and brawn are used and corrupted in the service of the system. The division between mental and physical workers means that an intel­lectual can study and work at something, coming up with solutions that have no relevance to real people. The worker can remain at a mindless job, never using his brain at all. In a real society there would be no dichotomy, no split between the body and mind worker. Intelligent people would not tolerate a neurotic, split society. They would not be content to work at unthinking jobs. I believe that the neurotic split has been the reason that a truly psychobiological psychotherapy has not been discovered heretofore. Mental workers (psychologists) have tried to find 'mental' solutions that were psychobiological. (Page 162)

Today's conventional psychotherapist inadvertently and mistakenly reinforces the gating system of patients by using the tools of con­cern, lis­tening, care, guidance, and advice. Therapy can become another act-out for the patient who is unconsciously getting what he wants (symbolic ful­fillment) instead of what he needs (feeling the lack of fulfillment as a child). The implication is that you can have good intentions and love neurosis away. If all those fail, the thera­pist uses the more direct means of quelling need/pain by prescribing tranquilizers. A therapist who tries to build a patient's self-esteem by telling her, "You really are capable, you know," is actually encouraging the patient to block out her real feeling of "I'm bad. People don't love me because I'm worthless." By trying to "love" pain away by being "nice," the therapist is fighting reality. He is functi­oning as the brain gate for the patient. In Primal Therapy, we want to open the gate and let in love, beauty, and life! To do that we must open the gate to real feelings of "No one loves me. I'm unlovable. It is all so hopeless," etc. (Page 279)