When Primal Therapy is thought to be understood simply by knowing the title of Janov's first book, The Primal Scream.  The participants definition of Primal is somewhat correct "      "  However, compare what ensues to the videos of the real thing on this site with Mary Lynn And SillyMickel Adzema.

 

I like to call this:  Yelling Practice  (there's absolutely no therapy involved)

 

 

 

Now, this would be funny if people thought that this was a caricature or spoof of Primal Therapy. The comments to this clip over at YouTube indicate that not only do the participants think they are actually doing something therapeutic, but others do too. One commenter actually goes into great detail to describe the elaborate methods he has developed for doing his "primal scream therapy," in all seriousness. 

 

I am including the comments here, so the extent of the ignorance about Primal Therapy -- for which Arthur Janov himself, with his decisions to withhold true primal information, has to be ultimately accountable -- can be shown. You will see I am not exaggerating about the degree of caricature. And perhaps you will understand my dismay at the kind of primal session depicted in the videos presented by Mary Lynn is virtually unknown in the face of the onslaught of the faux primal therapies and the faux primal therapists without a clue.

 

These comments are in order of first comments to the most recent, as of 10/04/09. The video above was put out by "pstfreak," so the first comment shows that while they were trying to be humorous in the video they did actually think they were doing a "therapy"! This is made clear in his comments below "that screaming stuff actually works" and "the scream therapy releases endorphins and tension." By the way, I am in no way trying to mock or disparage these people, I think they sincerely were trying to help themselves and help others by making the video. And it is not their fault that an entire culture of misinformation about primal therapy grew up from the negligence of Arthur Janov, which they had no alternative but to believe. Indeed, the tragedy is that these are folks who are looking for some way to release tensions and it is likely that, because of Janov's actions, they will never get the real thing, which would have transformed their lives.