Editorial: The Primal Process

It has been a truly humbling experience putting out this issue of Primal Renaissance. The Primal Movement is now twenty-five years old . . . and it shows. I hate to use the cliché, but, “you’ve come a long way, baby.” No longer are the results of the primal process a matter of conjecture. Most of the writers in this issue have been doing their process for two decades or more. The “personal access” that Witty and Khamsi speak of in their article—saying that a new generation of researchers and theorists are coming forth with their ideas grounded in their process—is patently evident in this issue.

So I feel humbled and in awe of the wisdom and power that comes through in these pieces. The authors in this issue come from widely different backgrounds, did their therapy at different places, for the most part; and yet you will see how congruent are their conclusions, especially as concerns “the farther reaches of the primal process” (to borrow from Maslow).

What we now know is that this journal is aptly named—primal renaissance—for we see that there is much, much more to be gained from the primal process than Janov or the other early primal pioneers ever fathomed. Not just for sickies anymore. John Lennon may have been “crippled inside,” but the vastness of his creativity, aided by the primal process he went through, is an indication of the far greater potential inherent in Primal of which I speak.

The writers also let us know that spirituality and the transpersonal are parts of that grander primal vista. Findeisen talks about regaining our highest, yet earliest, self and equates that with God and spirituality. Belden Johnson stuns us with his “shaman’s song”—in a few pages condensing the most powerful, positive, and beautiful vision of It All that I think I have ever read. Do not be surprised if it brings you to tears, as it did me, along with many other of the things I read in here. These were tears of joy; tears of finally coming home; for myself, but more for the movement with which I have identified. We are coming into our own. The dark night of the soul is over. It is a downhill slide from here. All we have to do is continue to follow the truth we have found; using the resources we have unearthed in abundance; and ever following the vision, positive self, and soul purposes with which we have at long last reunited.

There is still work to be done, of course; but these pages also stress how much of that begins to be centered in the outside world. As I point out, we work on changing our environment to be more conducive to eliciting our joyful self. But we also extend ourselves to manifest our vision in the world; we commit ourselves to the destiny of us all, to making a better world. For the process leads us inevitably to empathy and compassion with others, as Witty and Khamsi point out. We also get ever more rooted in a feeling of unity with all of life; as Findeisen and Johnson put it, We are all One; we’re all in this together.

So en-joy.

Rohnert Park, California Michael Adzema

20 February 1995

^*^*This editorial was originally published in 1995 in Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal Psychology (Vol. 1, No.2). [return to text]

Editorial: The Primal Process**

Mickel Adzema

Copyright © 1995 by Michael Derzak Adzema. mickel@primalspirit.com

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