Arthur Janov

Professional Life
Arthur Janov was born on August 21, 1924 in Los Angeles, California. He studied at the University of California where he received his bachelors and his masters in psychiatric social work. He continued his studies at Claremont Graduate School and earned his Ph.D. in psychology in 1960. Over his long career, Janov has held positions at the Veteran’s Administration, the Psychiatric Department at Los Angles Children’s Hospital and the Hacker Psychiatric Clinic in Beverly Hills. Since 1952 he has had his own private practice. Janov is best known for developing primal therapy, a discipline he created as a result of an experience with a patient in extreme psychological pain. He is the director of the Primal Center in Santa Monica, California, an organization that focuses on the practice and education of primal therapy. Janov has authored many articles and books, his best known being The Primal Scream.

Contribution to Psychology
Primal therapy is a type of psychotherapy that is used to treat trauma experienced in childhood. Janov believes that children who repress the pain of traumatic childhood experiences can develop neurosis as a result. Primal therapy is a method that is meant to help the client become aware of their pain through a re-living of the experience and ultimately, a re-living of the pain of the trauma. The goal of primal therapy is to release all of the pain associated with the event. Janov believes that traditional talking therapies tap into the mechanism of the cerebral cortex and never address the source of primal pain, which are associated with deeper recesses of the central nervous system.

Although primal therapy gained wide spread popularity during the 1970’s, it has waned in public acceptance and application, due in part to the lack of empirical evidence supporting its effectiveness. However, Janov and other psychologists continue to advocate for and practice primal therapy, citing the evidential based outcomes are only relevant to those experiencing the trauma and benefiting personally from the therapy.