On the Origins of the International Primal Association

After a dozen or so years behind the couch in my Park Avenue office, I became increasingly frustrated. My patients learned more than ever about themselves--indeed a benefit. Some even went further and undertook formal analytic training. However, intellectual understanding can be like a nice tan on a person harboring an imminent stroke or a silently growing cancer. The emotional pain beyond intellectual understanding can 'inexplicably' erupt into psychic and somatic symptomatology. Or at best, the years of analysis might lead to less harmful variations of the underlying neurotic patterns. In my opinion, all the time and money spent on analysis fails to yield anywhere near the high expectations and hopes we used to entertain as patients and practitioners.

Freud sought human truth in the deeper and forgotten layers of earlier experience. He learned that unmanageable feelings of great intensity eluded conscious awareness--and such feelings were the molten lava swirling up into all sorts of maladaptive behaviors. Before the turn of the century, he realized that memories and ideas detached from such feelings had little therapeutic value. Thus, he was led from hypnosis to the cathartic method to enable his patient to actively relive the formerly unmanageable affects. No fifty minute sessions, but hours and days were required to exorcise those demons of the unconscious.

Despite some striking successes, Freud began to find this method "too strenuous". Here, psycho-therapy took a fateful turn away from emotional turmoil toward the re-educative, insight method. In the future the dreams and free associations would allow interpretations of the unconscious feelings and conflicts. Therapy became emotionally sanitized and intellectualized as the patient gained an education rather than an experience. Freud's last paper was despairingly concerned about "Interminable Analysis", but he retained his faith in the "investigative power of psychoanalysis". Freud invoked "the witch metapsychology", and with his remarkable literary prowess forged the most compelling and dynamic psychological framework ever created. But this work of genius largely failed to increase the efficacy of psychoanalytic therapy beyond the usually clarifying and organizing effects of free-association.

My growing frustration as a therapist led me to introduce Wilhem Reich's and Al Lowen's techniques into psychoanalysis with some really encouraging results. It seemed apparent to me that powerfully determining affects were trapped in muscles, postures, and facial rigidities. Primal therapy seemed an inevitable extension. Janov's intense and prolonged format akin to Freud's cathartic therapy, extended my therapeutic endeavors. In order to personally experience the intense catharsis my patients began to have, I entered the May's Landing experience provided by Bill Swartley. There, I experienced some rather persuasive personal primals, and began a collegial friendship with a similarly impressed young Toronto psychiatrist, Tom Verny. At one point, Tom, Bill, and I decided to inaugurate an International Primal Association. In 1973, our first convention was held in Montreal. I was elected the Association's first President. A crucial decision had to be made by we three founders of IPA. Would this be a typically professional organization, or an open patient-therapist association? Bill Swartley and I outvoted Tom Verny two to one for the uniquely democratic type of organization it now remains.

In the first issue of our primal journal, I issued an invitation to Arthur Janov to join us as an associated institute. Sharing the spotlight was not Janov's way--he never answered me! From the beginning, I knew that certain of his beliefs were incommensurate with mine. He denied the reality of transference--let alone counter-transference, as crucial realities to deal with in the patient-therapist relationship. Indeed, quite a few of our colleagues bought this incredible denial. Thus, in one of our early Primal Journals (1974), I published an article to caution about the vital importance of transference, counter-transference, and the special relevance of differential diagnoses. This article can now be viewed on the world wide web.

My own apostasy from Freudian psychoanalysis was somewhat covertly expressed in "Towards a Bodymind Therapy" published in the rather orthodox Psychoanalytic Review (1974). The primacy of intense affects as opposed to mental analysis, and the importance of cerebral hemispheric differences as a neurologic basis for a body-mind orientation, was featured in this article. My neurologic orientation was not a passing intellectual interest, although my Ph.D. was in Clinical Psychology, and my professional training was in Theodore Reik's Psychoanalytic Institute. My doctoral thesis (1959) was based on a study of "The subcortical Substrate of autonomic and psychological stress. "Further, in 1961, I was part-time research psychologist for the Cornell-Bellevue Stroke Study, where I demonstrated that blood clotting time (Prothrombin Time) was significantly related to left vs. right brain damage. This was much to the chagrin of the full-time M.D.s employed in the Stroke Study. But that is another story.

At present, as I approach my 80th birthday, my main interests involve painting, drawing, music, and tennis, and recovery from a triple bypass. If I can manage it, I will gladly join you in the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the International Primal Association. In any event, may you all continue to learn, grow, and prosper!

This article was written for the 25th Anniversary IPA Convention in 1997. Hy Weiner was one of the IPA founders and its first president. In 1954 he started practicing psychotherapy in New York, and he received his doctorate in clinical psychology at NYU in 1959. Dr. Weiner directed the Primal Center of Toronto from 1973 to 1981 and then returned to New York City to practice and play tennis.