Primal Renaissance:
The Journal of Primal
Psychology
Volume 1, Number 1
Dedication
This first issue of Primal
Renaissance: The Journal of Primal Psychology is dedicated to Graham
Farrant, who did his part in inspiring a little bit of a "primal
renaissance" all his own. He passed away on 28 December 1993, but
is remembered fondly in the hearts of the many whom he touched and helped in
his life. This issue contains a rare published
article of his work (he wasn't much of a writer), co-authored by Terry
Larimore.
In the year
before his death, Graham told me to do my part to "bring Primal into the
Twenty-First Century." I did not know at that time how auspicious
that statement would be or that he would not be around to do his part in
that. His courage in presenting and ascribing validity to cellular
consciousness and the reality of sperm and egg memory is a part of Primal
history, although it has become widely accepted at this point, and is even
backed up by the latest findings from the sciences that border Primal, some of
which is presented in this issue. Still, my feeling is that his spirit
remains in us, continuing to inspire us to have the courage to break the molds
and to say the truth, no matter how it might sound to or be received by the
outside world. We hope to pay Graham tribute in honoring that standard
in this and upcoming issues of this journal.
—Mickel
Adzema, Editor
Editorial:
Concerning "Multiple Realities and
Primal Visions" and Welcome!
Welcome to the "primal
renaissance." The articles in this first issue were chosen
specifically to indicate the new direction that some of us see the Primal
movement and the world in general has taken. For if this is not a time
of "multiple realities and primal visions," what is it?
The Primal community, by virtue of
Primal Therapy's capacity to unfold our real -- and distinctively unique
-- selves through the process of primaling, has naturally always comprised
multiple perspectives and widely divergent approaches. The one
commonality in the Movement is the valuing of catharsis and deep
feeling. But it seems even more so today, with the inclusion of
past-lives, holotropic, and shamanic perspectives and approaches—to name
just a few. Multiple realities and primal visions, for sure.
The Primal Movement has come into its
young adulthood as well. With Stettbacher and Alice Miller emphasizing
self-primaling; deMause proclaiming the fetal origins of history; Wasdell
describing the conception and early fetal roots of societies and social
movements; the Frank Lake/ first-trimester group in England; the Hendricks'
emphasis on couples' relationships; William Emerson's emphasis on treating
infants and children; John Rowan's explorations of subpersonalities; Jean
Liedloff's proposing childcaring learned from "primitive" cultures;
Stanislav Grof's integration of the perinatal and cathartic with the
transpersonal; Graham Farrant's sperm-and-egg mix with spirituality; Barbara
Findeisen's STAR program and birth regressions; Arthur Janov's inclusion of
the psychotechnical into the process; Belden Johnson's integration of primal
with Nature and ecology in a form of shamanism; the entire pre- and perinatal
psychology movement, especially as represented by its organization, the
Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH); and,
finally, the inclusion of catharsis in past-lives work in the approaches of
therapists like Dan Miller, Roger Woolger, and Morris Netherton . . . and
there are other facets as well.
On the global level, there has never
been such a time of multiple realities. All cultures coming together,
linking and cross-fertilizing through the medium of high technology and mass
telecommunications, America's "melting pot" descriptor is becoming
applicable to the entire world. Admittedly, there are highly visible,
blatant examples of isolated, intransigent elements resisting this coming
together of understanding with all their might—as evidenced by ethnic
conflict in the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East,
and the new Germany; and by the rise of "hate groups" just about
everywhere. But they are fighting a rearguard battle. Their recent
visibility may be due to the increasing desperation of their acts in
attempting to stave off what they unconsciously know to be an inevitable
coming together of understanding of the multiple cultures of the world.
This coming together of multiple perspectives, "multiple realities,"
is all the more phenomenal in its being enriched, in a position of honor, and
for the first time ever, by the wisdom of indigenous and native cultures,
which the rest of the world is coming to for help in trying to learn how to
live with Nature, and not destroy Her, and us along with.
In keeping with these radical and
profound changes, we wanted our first issue of Primal Renaissance: The
Journal of Primal Psychology to break cleanly from the past and to clear
away a much broader, much more varied territory in which to grow. For at
this juncture, twenty-five years after the publishing of The Primal Scream,
it has become clear that primal psychology lies at a center, bordered on all
sides by major new changes and cutting-edge findings in a number of fields and
sciences. In this issue, you will see primal psychology's overlap with
the new physics (Miller), biology (Sheldrake),
anthropology (Adzema and Radford),
shamanism (Johnson), and even
UFOlogy and metaphysics (Mack).
The time is ripe, we feel, to begin
building the bridges to the many bordering domains of knowledge so that the
resulting cross-fertilization can serve to enrich us, in the same way that we
hope to, at the least, stimulate or provoke them.
To that end, John Mack—a holotropic
breathwork facilitator—challenges the very foundations of our culture's
materialistic paradigm in his presentation of his findings in working with UFO
abductees. Some of us in Primal or pre- and perinatal psychology feel
that there are some perinatal explanations, aspects, or overtones to these
abductees' experiences. No doubt some of these will be brought out in
the continuing dialogue we expect to be provoked by his article and to be
published in this journal (under the Primal Voices and other
categories). But Mack is no stranger to the perinatal, to say the least,
and his perspective as well as the evidence he describes, based on his indepth
research, deserves to be thoroughly heard out, at least initially,
unchallenged by pretentious explanations—of primal, perinatal, or any
sort—made by those who have not been where he has been.
In this issue, you might say, Primal
Renaissance is staking out its territory. This new journal will not
just be a journal of primal therapy, or of primal integration, or of primal
process education; it will be much more. In choosing the term primal
psychology we hope to have created the larger canopy, under which the
intercourse of allied discoveries can occur and create the wholistic and
multi-faceted progeny that can help take us through the current global crisis
into the Twenty-First Century flowering and blossoming that I describe in the
Prologue to follow.
The other emphasis of this first issue,
"primal visions," has to do with the growing awareness of the
aliveness of Nature. As Sheldrake, in this issue's article, puts it:
This hypothesis [morphic resonance]
is part of a wider change in paradigm that is going on, which I summarized
in my most recent book, The Rebirth of Nature, the idea of Nature as
alive. This idea is not only that of the Earth being alive, as Gaia,
but of the entire cosmos as alive, akin to a developing organism.
Through science the mechanistic theory of Nature is being transcended.
Science is returning us, I believe, to a new sense of the life of Nature.
Sheldrake's hypothesis, furthermore, in
positing memory as inherent in Nature—as opposed to stored in any
"physical" thing such as a brain—supports our experiences of
cellular consciousness in sperm, egg, zygote, and blastocyst regressions, as
described in this issue's article by Larimore and
Farrant.
However, I wish to add one more
observation regarding our "multiple realities" theme. There
was sharp disagreement, among our editorial board, on some of the articles
herein, with half of the reviewers expressing strong support and half strong
opposition. This tells me that the ideas in those articles are highly
controversial and provocative.
In America in the last few decades, the
label "controversial" has come to mean that particular thing does
not get published or disseminated. It is well known, for example, that
publishers have, for economic reasons they say, become extremely conservative
in their decisions about what to publish; they have become increasingly
unwilling to take the risks of "controversial" material (as those of
us writing in Primal and pre- and perinatal psychology know only too
well). It was not always that way in publishing of course. But
this is what seems to have settled in on our culture; and consequently what
the rest of us have come to regard as normal. The mainstream of thinking has
become quite narrow; anything outside of it being snickered at, if brought up
at all, on newscasts, talk shows, TV "magazines," and
documentaries. Two notable cases in point in the last year being the
audience's reaction during the appearance of Primal's notable personality, Barbara
Findeisen, on "Oprah" -- and Oprah's later disavowing of that
show and its topic -- and the biased and denigrating way John Mack's findings
have been presented on "Dateline" and other shows since the release
of his book.
But when you eliminate the
controversial and the provocative from any field, or any culture, you
eliminate its growing edge. You create stagnation in that field or culture by
judging as acceptable only that which resonates with the familiar and the
center of the stream. This route is a dead end for any culture or field of
endeavor. No matter how long such a thing might continue in existence, its
vitality, its lifeblood is gone.
The mainstream perspective also ignores
what, from the new physics, we should have long since learned by now about the
relativity of truth. Our understanding that the perceiver
"creates" the reality perceived, and of the impossibility of
Absolute Knowledge or Ultimate Truth—even in the "hard"
sciences—has resulted in the postmodern stance that Truth is best served,
though ultimately unattainable, by the inclusion of as many of the smaller
"truths," as many of the perspectives, and "voices," as
possible. We can then know that we have staked out the territory within
which the Great Mystery (the Absolute Truth) should somewhere exist—each
individual ascertaining it for him- or herself.
This relates to the multiple-realities
theme, as well as to the inclusion of the Primal Voices section, at the end of
the journal, where we invite readers to participate by including their own
truths, their own voices, to the harmony, or cacophony, arising from the
articles.
Knowing all this, then, it is with
pride (and humility) that we launch this new endeavor, within it helping to
set a precedent for what this journal will stand for. Having been the
object of such prejudice, dismissal, and disdain, from Janov on up, simply
because of the unusual nature of our findings, a primal journal could hardly
do less than to strive to correct that by valuing diversity in its pages and
requiring open-mindedness of its readers. Yet this is only in keeping
with the Primal attitude, of course—the attitude that follows the anomalies
of our experience into their deepest roots, that searches beneath every rock
for the keys to our personal truth which have been hidden from the daylight of
acceptability.
In truth, when I am able to bring
forward pieces that can trigger such opposite and extreme reactions in people,
I feel that I am doing my job. If we piss a few people off, then we
surely are inspiring a few others. That is also in keeping with a Primal
stance. Love these articles or hate them, chances are, either way,
you'll remember them. Maybe you'll think about them. That is the
best that an editor could wish.
Rohnert Park, California
Michael Adzema
20 February 1995
Copyright © 1995 by Michael
Derzak Adzema. mickel@primalspirit.com
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