In spite of that, Freud spent the most fruitful years of his career in the development of Psychoanalysis, which he himself called a "secondary process". , after concluding that it was impossible to work with the "primary process."26 Perhaps it was due to the kind of person Freud was that we had to wait so long for the re-introduction of primal and "primary-process" techniques.27
The client-centered therapist presumes to make no value judgments of a client's statement of feelings. He only reflects to the client in a manner which allows the client to use the therapist as a mirror. He emphasizes the key material related by the client in his reflections so as to allow the client to decide his own directions of maturation. Rogers implies that the psyche has a natural healing process, which is beyond the reach of the therapist, because it differs so for each person. The therapist must become the reinforcing ally of the "healing process" in order for a client to first recognize his "self" and then become it.29
I believe this unconditional positive regard is essential while using primal techniques in order to provide the feeling of support and safety one needs to be able to express the irrational feelings which surface when defenses are stripped away.
Nevertheless, Perls' eight30 Gestalt principles are very compatible (except as noted) with the process which takes place both within and outside a primal group. They are:
When feedback is given in the group, we always speak in the first person in order to make it clear (even to ourselves) that our feedback - no matter how accurate it may be - is simply our projection. Thus, "You come on very coldly" is not acceptable but, "I feel that you come on very coldly to me" can be very useful to both.the giver and receiver of the feedback - because the giver is owning and taking responsibility for something he feels rather than making what he may choose to consider an "objective" evaluation.
Many ask, "What is the goal of primal therapy?" As I pointed out in Chapter I, many clients report the feeling of being "that distinct person they were meant to be." More specifically, as they progress through the process, they report changes in their attitudes, beliefs and behaviours similar to what Abraham Maslow called "Self-Actualizing" behavior.31
Self-actualization is a lifetime process. In primal, we believe that each of us will find our own way down to the road to self-actualization, as the roadblocks we formed as children (in order not to feel our pain) are removed. There are as many possibilities of where this road will lead as there are people. Reaching it is the natural process. It is only the roadblocks that are unreal.
Often a client will begin a session very confused about what he is feeling. I may ask him to free associate until his body, tone or voice gives some clue to his feelings, an incident in his life, a parent or even a present situation which is blocking him. When this happens, I suggest that he deepen his breathing and sink into the situation - that is, let it overtake him. This will usually get him back to a place where we can resume the tracking process. Often this will lead directly to an insight from either an earlier primal , not fully worked through or to a new area not yet explored primally. The client will then, in many cases, choose to stop and integrate rather than go for more feelings, and possibly overloading himself.
Transference and Counter-transference in Primal Integration. Transference is the process whereby a client displaces or projects feelings, ideas and images onto his therapist, which derive from previous figures in his life.33 At first, Freud considered the transference process to be one which worked against the psychoanalytic process. However, upon recognizing the consistency of the phenomenon, he soon altered his methods - making the transference process perhaps the most important aspect of the therapy. By interpreting his client's transference: for example, "You seem to be behaving toward me as though I were your father," Freud found that many conflicts could be resolved.
Psychoanalysts feel that it is very important for the patient-analyst-relationship to be pure. The less the patient knows about his analyst's own beliefs, problems, attitudes and life style, the freer the patient can be in projecting his fantasies onto him. Therefore, any socializing or relationship outside the analyst's office is taboo during the course of analysis.34
"Counter-transference is defined as the analyst's transference onto the patient, which is a very unhealthy and distorting aspect when it occurs in the psychoanalytic process."34 When primalling, a client is almost always "interacting" with a parent. Therefore, I believe that when a client becomes aware of feelings toward a primal therapist, it should be assumed - unless the client discovers otherwise - that he is interacting in the present. We deal with these feelings in a one-to-one, face-to-face encounter and let them go, as is the case with all feelings in primal therapy wherever the client takes them. Often they go into primals. However, often they do not. As primal therapist, I have gotten some of my most valuable feedback during such interactions.
I recently had a woman complain to me, during a group, that she could not go as far as she might have during her primal because I did not stay with her long enough. While relating this to me, she expressed much anger. A Janovian would have instructed her to lie down and continue the dialogue with one of her parents. Instead I accepted her feelings and realized that she was right. We resolved the issue in the present, and at the next session - at her own suggestion - she connected the anger felt for me onto her father, who also spent very little time with her.
Sometimes, the difficulties have no primal connections at all. I believe that there can be very present feelings of affection, mistrust, fear, anger or sexual attraction between a client and therapist. It is impossible to stay detached as the psychoanalysts suggest. There is too much physical contact and expression in primal. Should a primal therapist maintain the air of detachment necessary to eliminate such present feelings, I would question his ability to provide the safety one needs to primal; when one opens himself up to care for someone, he must allow other feelings to follow.
Consequently, counter-transference in the primal process is also quite common when dealing with the inevitable feelings of the therapist toward the cl ient. It is perfectly permissable and advisable for a therapist to lie down and go right into a primal of his own during a therapy session, if some ripe material surfaces and makes it difficult for him to work with others, so long as a co-therapist can take charge of the group. Of course, feelings toward a client - which are not clearly primal material - are also dealt with in the present. I usually make the distinction between past, counter-transference, and present feelings toward a client by evaluating the situation. For me, if there is present data, I will deal with the client face-to-face. If not, I will look inward. For example, a client who moves very slowly in therapy sometimes frustrates me. That is clearly my counter-transference, as each client is entitled to move at his own pace. So when I feel a strong need to push someone, or give an insight which I consider obvious, yet the client does not see, I will very seriously look into my own needs. I have found that sharing my own primal material with a client who has triggered it builds an enormous amount of trust and rapport between the client and me - as well as within the group in general.
Primal massage as deveoped by William Swartley36 is applied with the fingertips only at the point at which the client indicates he is blocked. He may do this either consciously by saying or pointing unconsciously, by grasping a specific area or obviously holding it in as resistance to the pain. Firmly massaging the area will either cause the abreaction to intensify or have no result, except perhaps to reduce the pain in that spot, thus allowing another defense to take over.
A primal session could therefore look identical to Bio-energetics with one major difference. In Primal Integration, we do not encourage expression, we encourage feeling. The expression then becomes automatic at the client's choosing, either conscious or unconscious.
In Bio-energetics, the expression is encouraged at the verbal suggestion before the client has moved to an affective level. We have found that the feeling that is really "ripe" is often not the feeling that the client talked about at the beginning of the session. Something entirely different may come to the surface once a client begins to freely track it. Therefore, Primal Integration allows the client's body and his unconscious to determine the material on which he works rather than his conscious thinking process, which could conceivably be programmed to choose safer material than that which is more critical.
Therapist: Imagine yourself getting very,-very small ... about half your present size. (Pause about two minutes). How old are you right now?
Client: Six years old. (The client invariably gives an age other than his present chronological age).
Therapist: What are you doing?
Client: I am in my room.
Therapist: Describe your room.
Client: (He is encouraged to go through a lengthy and very detailed description of his room, including colors, furniture, etc. The purpose of this is to give the client as clear an image as possible).
Therapist: What are you feeling now?
Client: Scared. Daddy is coming home from work. He is going to be mad when he finds out that I didn't come right home from school and I worried Mommy.
Therapist: Sink into the scared feeling. Let your breathing get deeper. (I pause for a long time).
Client: He's coming home now.
Therapist: What do you want to do?
Client: I want to hold my breath and be strong.
Therapist: Stay with the feeling. Breathe.
Client: Daddy, I am scared of you! (He is now screaming cries of terror). Go away! (In this instance, the client at this point instantly switched to another scene about a year later when his father was separating from his mother). Come back, Daddy! Please don't go! Come back Daddy! I didn't mean it! (The scene where he wanted his father to go away triggered the guilt he felt when his father left the house permanently. He felt that his father was leaving because of the earlier desires for him to go away).
This is an illustration of how a relatively mild and perhaps seemingly unimportant scene produced many years of guilt previously untraceable to a real ause. The fantasy trip stirred up the fear. Once we had this feeling, we abandoned the fantasy trip in favor of the feeling which tracked automatically to a major primal scene, the father's leaving. After the guided fantasy, the patient was ready to.work quite autonomously with nothing more than support rom another group member.
Psychodrama, a method developed by Jacob Moreno, has been widely used in many therapuetic situations. The goal set down by Moreno was "emotional understanding of one's relationships with others and their effects on one's life."41.
In primal, the goal is similar, but the psychodrama itself stops when an affective level is reached.
A typical example of how this happens can be summarized as follows: A woman was telling the group how her mother would always criticize her whenever she failed to be the best at whatever she was involved in. Whenever she succeeded, there was no recognition. We had her pick a mother out of the group who listened to how she failed to get the part of Cinderella in school. Instead of giving her the comfort she sought as a child, the "mother" proceeded to lecture her as to what she "should" have done in order to get the part. This almost immediately triggered tears of hurt which turned into rage.
Psychodrama is usually not suggested for extroverted clients who use verbal behavior as a defense. They have no problem acting-out roles. It seems to help tremendously in cases where clients are more introverted and find a defense in staying inside themselves.
Perls' method of working with dreams is frequently used in Primal Integration. The method is a very simple one and one which clients learn very quickly to use when they bring a meaningful dream to their therapy session. Basically it involves describing a dream as though it were happening in the present, and becoming - that is - acting out - various parts of the dream. When an affective level is reached, one stays with that feeling until the message behind the dream is felt as well as understood.43
Gestalt in combination with primal has many possibilities; many new techniques combining these two schools are under study.44
Jackins has set up a network of training centers. Groups of about twenty meet in elementary co-counselling under supervision within the class. Later, students arrange to meet in pairs between classes to co-counsel. Emphasis is on talking through problems in a way that encourages discharge of feeling. The co-counsellors simply support each other, validate the feelings that emerge, and help keep the "client" focussed on present time.46
Within a primal group setting, by having clients work in pairs using guidelines plus a reasonable amount of supervision, it is possible for more than half the group members to work simultaneously. This makes a group the most practical setting in which to primal. It also promotes a deeper interaction and sense of trust between members than is found in most therapy groups. Many who go through the primal process find peer support very instrumental in providing them with the strength to explore their deepest feelings.
In the next chapter I shall illustrate how these techniques are used during primal integration.
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24 S. Freud and J. Breuer, Studies on Hysteria, London, Hogarth Press,
1893, p. 46
25 J. P. Chaplin, Dictionary of Psychology, New York, Dell Publishing Company,
1968, p. 378
26ibid., p. 442
27 Swartley, Primal Abreaction Training Programs, Toronto, Center for the
Whole Person, 974, p. 20
28Rogers. Client-Centered Therapy. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961 pp. 131-196
29ibid., pp. 28-31
30Perls, Hefferline and Goodman, Gestalt Therapy, New York, Dell Publishers, 1951, pp. 130-135
31 Maslow, Motivation and Personality, New York, Harper and Row, 1954
pp. 203-234
32 Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, New York, Simon and
Schuster, 1924, pp. 112-113
33 Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psycho-Analysis, Totawa, New Hampshire,
Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1973, p. 168
34 Kubie, Practical and Theoretical Aspects of Psvchoanalvsis, New York,
International Universities Press, Inc., 1950, pp.57-59
35 Rycroft, op.. cit. p. 25
36Swartley, Massage of Body Armor in Primal Inteqration, Mays Landing,
New Jersey, Center For the Whole Person, 1974
37 Lowen, The Betrayal of the Body, New York, MacMillan, 1967, pp. 209-232
38 Desoille, Directed Daydreams, New York, Psychosynthesis Research
Foundation,7965
39 Leuner, "Guided Affective Imagery", American Journal of Psychotherapy,
Vol. 22, No. 1, 1969, pp. 4-22
40 LeCron, Self-Hypotism, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
1964, pp.49-63
41 Moreno, Psychodrama, New York, Beacon House, 1946, Vol. I
42Perls, op.cit., pp. 5-70
43 Perls, ibid
44 Marcus, Gestalt Therapy and Beyond, Los Angeles, 1974, Speech delivered
to International Primal Association
45 Jackins, The Distinctive Characteristics of Re-Evaluation Counselling, Seattle, Washington, Rational Island Publishers, 1973, pp. 5-8
46 Kelly, The New Education, Santa Monica, California, Interscience
Research Institute, Inc., 1972, P. 42