Primal Therapy is experienced in seven dynamic, overlapping, temporal stages. This is an original concept of Primal Therapy as an orderly and cohesive process with predictable stages. Each stage seems to be a necessary precondition for each subsequent stage, and each subsequent stage emerges logically out of what has already occurred. Still, experiences that seem to characterize a particular stage may also occur at other stages. The stages are as follows:
Stage 1. Initiation: The person learns how to make contact with her real self and how to do primal work. She typically begins therapy wrestling with the issue of commitment to the therapy--as it seems risky--but ultimately accept the demands of the therapy. During this period it may be difficult to feel, and she may become very frustrated. Nevertheless, when she does contact feelings, they seem deeper and more powerful than anything previously experienced. She acknowledges the tremendous intensity of these feelings and learns that she can have these feelings in therapy without "going crazy." She now sees herself as a feeling person and as starting a new phase of life.
Stage 2. Alienation: The person feels himself separated from his network of social relationships, and from who he was before beginning the therapy. Painfully alone on this journey, he feels as if others are incapable of understanding what he is going through. He tends to feel different from--perhaps even superior to--people who have not experienced the primal process. The world seems a little crazy. People seem "unreal." He may want to "turn on" the whole world to Primal Therapy, while simultaneously worrying that his own therapy may not work or that he may be incapable of enduring it. He sometimes wonders whether others in the therapy might be getting more out of it than he is. The primaler is confused much of the time, and learns to allow this confusion. Afraid of the outside world, the person tends to withdraw.
Stage 3. Despair: The person arrives at a distinct point of hopelessness and profound aloneness in the world. Attempts to avoid the loneliness, pain, and struggle are seen as futile. Often it seems that she isn't getting anywhere, that she will never get through her old feelings nor get what she needs. The primaler wonders whether the therapy is worth all the pain. She often hopes for a "magical primal" that will instantly relieve her of this unbearable pain. Still, there are moments, often after a productive therapy session, when faith is renewed that the therapy may work for her and that she may find contentment.
Stage 4. Acceptance: The primaler begins to accept the painful reality of his early life--that he did not receive nearly enough sustenance and support. He realizes that it is too late for his childhood needs to be met; and so, giving up the false hope of ever finding the love that he was lacking early in life, he resolves to stop struggling for that love in the present. He accepts that there is no payoff for his pain and that he is alone in the world. He becomes aware of himself as truly separate from, yet deeply sharing with, everyone in the world. The person is now more tolerant of others and accepting of their feelings. He now accepts that he must turn inward. Primal Therapy begins to feel like an integral part of life. He realizes that, whoever he has become, it is impossible to return to being who he was.
Stage 5. Expansion: The person turns inward and discovers a sense of great personal power, and overwhelming compassion, emanating from her center. She is becoming aware of an inner love and beauty, and she realizes that it can be shared with others. She begins to take a more active role in her therapy, and assumes a new sense of responsibility for her life; she disengages from dependence on others and moves toward self-reliance.
Stage 6. Integration: Newly-discovered feelings of personal power and compassion are now integrated into the primaler's personality, as he discovers how to live from this new identity. The person now reacts differently in familiar situations. He is more honest and straightforward than before, and relationships seem easier and less complicated. He realizes that he is capable of surviving on his own, becomes less dependent on others, and gradually feels less anger and attachment toward his parents. He begins to consciously live life in terms of his own needs, rather than in efforts to please others. The primaler actively counteracts "neurotic" habits from the past in order to gain a healthier mode of functioning in the present. He begins to accept the uniqueness of his own reality and to trust that his vision is deep and accurate.
Stage 7. Disengagement: The person feels stronger, clearer, and more whole . . . and no longer so dependent on the therapy. Having accomplished the major work of therapy, she is faced with the task of separating from formal therapy. In therapy, she begins to focus more on current feelings, although old feelings now tend to be deeper and more terrifying than ever. The primaler still feels the inevitable hurts of daily living but is capable of feeling and moving through this pain. Primal Therapy has begun to assume a less central place in her life, and she is less anxious about "doing the therapy right" or being "a primal person." The person feels able to meet life's challenges and wants to explore other avenues of growth.
Primals first deal with anger, then hurt, and then the need for love. "The Primal sequence is like life in reverse," according to Janov. "First, early in life was the need for love, then the hurt for not getting it, and finally the anger to ease the hurt"
Wheelis' (1973) "five-stage theory," defines the following stages in the process of change: (1) suffering, (2) insight, (3) will, (4) action, and (5) change (p. 102). The second, Bugental's (1965) "three-stage theory," consists of (1) awareness of existential givens, (2) confrontation with existential givens, and (3) authentic being. In both cases the person becomes aware of life's painful realities, faces these realities, and thereby discovers new resources within.
Primal Therapy begins with Initiation, in which a person learns to make contact with his or her real self, leading to Alienation both from the unreal self and from the network of social relationships in which that unreal self functioned. As this sense of alienation intensifies, the person arrives at a point of Despair in which they experience profound aloneness in the world. No longer avoiding their aloneness and pain, the struggle to alter one's situation is finally seen as futile, and one moves to Acceptance of the reality of one's early life: that they did not receive enough sustenance and support. One turns inward and undergoes an Expansion in which one discovers a sense of personal power--and feelings of overwhelming compassion--emanating from one's center. As a consequence of this discovery, the person begins to experience an Integration in which they incorporate into their personality newly-discovered feelings of personal power and compassion, and discovers how to live in the world with new feelings and a new identity. Completion of these tasks leads to Disengagement in which, having accomplished the major work of therapy, one is faced with the task of separating from the formal process of therapy.
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