Beyond Belief
Cults, Healers, Mystics and Gurus—Why We Believe
by Arthur Janov, Ph.D.
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Pub Date May 03 2016 | Archive Date Feb 17 2017
Description
This book examines what forces in us drive us to believe in mystics, healers and gurus. What unconscious impulses lead us to join cults, and reveals how feelings become beliefs in the brain. Dr. Janov discusses all of this through the autobiographies of patients who have lived it. He also examines how the government functions as a cult with the same dynamics as any cult leader from Jim Jones to Rajneesh and to Ben laden.
There is a chapter on the born again, conversion experience and why that happens. Another on what makes a leader or healer and what makes a follower. He cites many research studies on how thinking something will kill pain actually does, and why that happens. He analyzes belief systems and how they function to keep us comfortable. That the brain doesn't care if it is Islam, the Republican Party or "the secret," it all works the same in the brain. What he points out is that intense feelings become unshakable beliefs which then are impervious to argument. Even though we think that a deity has saved us, it is actually the thought of a deity saving us is what finally saves us.
This is the first thorough account of how beliefs work in the brain to bring us comfort and calm. But it is a spurious calm since there is a seething caldron of pain that lies below beliefs that will make us sick and shorten our lives.
Why do we believe what we believe?
Dr. Arthur Janov is best known for his international bestseller, The Primal Scream. In Beyond Belief, Dr. Janov examines the power of beliefs and how they are used as a mechanism for dealing with early trauma that goes as far back as birth. Beliefs are a way to rationalize with pain rooted deep in the unconscious, and reveal that love is a biological need. Janov applies engrossing case studies and his many years of experience to bring us one step closer to understanding human behavior, and how pain can become converted into an idea.
A Note From the Publisher
Dr. Janov received his B.A. and M.S.W. in psychiatric social work from the University of California, Los Angeles and his Ph.D. in psychology from Claremont Graduate School. Before turning to Primal Therapy, he practiced conventional psychotherapy in his native California. He did an internship at the Hacker Psychiatric Clinic in Beverly Hills, worked for the Veterans' Administration at Brentwood Neuro-psychiatric Hospital and was in private practice from 1952 through 1967. He was also on the staff of the Psychiatric Department at Los Angeles Children's Hospital where he was involved in developing their psychosomatic unit.
The course of Dr. Janov's professional life changed in a single day in the mid-1960's with the discovery of Primal Pain. During a therapy session, he heard (as he describes it), "an eerie scream welling up from the depths of a young man who was lying on the floor.” He came to believe that this scream was the product of some unconscious, intangible wound that the patient was unable to resolve. Since then, Dr. Janov has devoted his professional life to the investigation of that underlying pain and the development of a precise, scientific therapy that could mitigate its lifelong effects. As Director and Supervisor of Research with the Primal Foundation Laboratory, Dr. Janov was the first psychologist to submit his results to scientific scrutiny. Studies at Rutgers, the University of Copenhagen, St. Bartholomew's Hospital in England, and the University of California at Los Angeles have all supported his theory that Primal Therapy can produce measurable positive effects on the function of the human brain and body.
Dr. Janov and his wife, Dr. France D. Janov, co-director at the Primal Center, have lectured worldwide on Primal Theory and Primal Therapy, including to the Royal College of Medicine, London, England; Hunter College, New York; Karolinska Medical and Research Center, Stockholm, Sweden. His work has also been the subject of a PBS special in the United States and of documentaries in Germany, England, France, and Sweden. In 1989 in an effort to expand the Primal network, Dr. Janov established Dr. Janov's Primal Center in Santa Monica, California with his wife, Dr. France Janov.
Advance Praise
From Library JournalFor a new generation of neurotics (psychotherapists included), psychologist Janov ( The Primal Scream , Putnam, 1970) recycles his famous psychophysiological cure-all for mental illness: primal therapy, widely known as scream therapy. He sticks to his original premise that pain experienced from unfulfilled needs produces an unreal, unfeeling self constantly at war with the real self. However, he now claims his theory has been validated by scientific studies in the fields of immunology, weeping, cancer, and brain science. Janov blends case studies with exposition on repression, imprinting, birth trauma, the difference between "normal" and "neurotic," and a discussion on bogus primal therapists. Along the was he disparages New Age rebirthers and most conventional therapies. Controversial remarks abound, such as, "Optimism . . . may only be a good defense." There's even an oblique reference to the cause of sudden infant death when Janov describes how the terror of being in a dark room alone can trigger earlier birth trauma. Twenty years later, he's still revolutionary, articulate, and maybe right. Highly recommended.
- Janice Aren ofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix
From Publishers Weekly"Love makes the brain," writes psychotherapist Janov (The Primal Scream; Why You Get Sick, How You Get Well) in this analysis of brain chemistry and emotion. Neurological research, he argues, confirms his theory that trauma from infancy, birth or the prenatal environment irrevocably damages brain functioning and leads to a plethora of physical and emotional ailments. Fully loved infants, however, develop healthy brains that enable them to cope well with life. Everything from autism and allergies to dyslexia, ADD, cancer and heart disease in later life, and even homosexuality and intellectualism (conditions Janov apparently considers aberrant) can be traced, in his view, simply to lack of adequate love. Though Janov believes such damage can never be undone, he advocates a type of therapy through which patients relive the trauma and thus free their repressed pain. Despite the merit of its important and obvious thesis that infants need love, Janov's argument is so simplistic, poorly organized and carelessly written that it cannot be accepted without reservation. He dismisses such factors as DNA, intellect and postnatal experiences, and presents only sketchy details regarding research studies or case histories. The few patient biographies he includes read more like product testimonials than complex analyses. While it's evident that Janov intends a helpful book, he scarcely mentions what can be done to ensure that every infant is wanted. Instead, he lays a heavy load of guilt on any woman who experiences even a touch of ambivalence about her pregnancy. That infants need love is a solid point that is not well served by wagging one's finger at mother.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.From BooklistJanov, of Primal Scream (1970) fame, considers the effects of love, broadly conceived, on individual growth and development. Those effects aren't only emotional, and they can result in such physical phenomena as the growth or lack of growth of many elements of the brain and nervous system. Janov shows how those elements develop and what happens when they are stunted. He describes anatomy and physiology and then, using case histories to illustrate his points, goes into clinical aspects of his subject. Although some of those cases are presented as conducive to primal scream therapy, there is enough in the book to make it useful to nonspecialist therapists and to patients. Many libraries will want to acquire Thomas Lewis and colleagues' General Theory of Love as well as Janov. The two books have much in common, yet are sufficiently different in approach to both merit shelf space. William BeattyReview"Janov writes for the lay person, and the challenging material is made easier by his style. His sentences are short and clearly written and his tone is earnest, as if he hopes to convince everyone what he already knows to be a revolution in its early stages. . . . The reader who finishes the book will have no trouble understanding that 'lack of physical closeness just after birth reduces the number of serotonin receptors.'" -- ForeWord, March, 2000
Marketing Plan
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Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9780986203176 |
| PRICE | $24.95 (USD) |
