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Most people today suffer from neurosis, an emotionally and physically crippling disease.
Neurosis actually begins very early, when children are not given what they need; that is, when they are not properly nourished or kept warm and dry; when they are not held, caressed, listened to or allowed to develop at their own pace. It makes matters worse when they are not allowed to express their feelings about being deprived.
All this makes a child feel as if he is not loved. Very often he has to shut himself off from that reality because the pain is too great. But, when he represses the painful feelings, he also locks away his original needs and therefore, denies part of himself. This sequence can happen many times over, and its effects carry on far beyond childhood.
Repressed early feelings do not disappear. They remain trapped inside and build up a lasting tension throughout the body. This tension drives a person into a continual struggle to symbolically fulfill his childhood needs and frequently brings on depression and anxiety.
Every aspect of his life may suffer — from his work, to his relationship with friends and family, to his overall state of mental and physical health. No matter how hard he tries, an adult cannot satisfy the forgotten needs of his childhood. He can resolve this futile struggle only by re-experiencing the original hurt that has been blocked away from consciousness for so long. The specific experience of reliving a repressed painful childhood event or feeling is termed a "Primal"
Since neurosis is largely a denial of feeling, feeling is the key to resolving it. Primal Therapy, therefore, helps a person by encouraging the buried hurts to surface so they can at last be faced, felt, understood and learned from.
Feeling pain, rather than repressing it, has remarkable effects. Tension in the body diminishes and psychosomatic symptoms are alleviated. Through resolving buried hurts, a person comes to feel more at ease, more alive and more in control of his own life. Freed from the constant and exhausting demands of old needs he can now set about satisfying real, present needs.
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