Arthur Janov

Psychotherapist who popularised primal scream therapy

ARTHUR Janov, who died recently aged 93, was a Californian psychotherapist best known for advocating “primal scream” therapy, which involved revisiting painful aspects of childhood and shouting loudly about them in a bid to eradicate their malign effect upon the personality.

The primal scream would spell, he claimed, “the end of mental disease” and was the subject of his first book — boldly subtitled The Cure for Neurosis — which appeared in 1970.

The publisher sent a copy to John Lennon in the middle of The Beatles’ break-up, and Lennon was taken by a work which chimed with his barely suppressed rage at childhood abandonment by his parents.

He and Yoko Ono signed up for sessions with Janov, and the year ended with an album whose often harrowing songs (such as Mother) were a result of that self-examination.

This was Janov’s heyday as an exponent of something which was the ultimate in “letting it all hang out”. He had, however, spent many years in conventional psychotherapy.

Arthur Janov was born on August 24, 1924, in Los Angeles, the son of a truck driver. His childhood was difficult, with belligerent teenage years compounded by his mother’s psychological struggles. After naval service, he studied psychology at the University of California in Los Angeles, and played in a jazz band.

While specialising in the application of psychology to social work, notably with children, he gained a PhD in 1960.

He already had a private practice in California when, in 1967, a patient told him of seeing a stage performance in London featuring a man in nappies who rushed about while drinking milk and calling the names of his parents before vomiting, something in which the audience was asked to participate. For Janov this tale was pivotal, and his career took a new direction.

Such therapy had been broached in military circles for traumatised veterans, but Janov produced a theory that repressed early “primal scenes” (such as parental neglect) had to be sought out and, by dint of full-throated screams, eradicated in order to cure many different forms of mental illness.

Now dismissing former colleagues as charlatans, he and wife Vivian Glickenstein set up the Primal Institute, which was continually in search of new premises as neighbours complained about the terrifying noises coming from the clinic (Janov admitted these could sound like murder).

They eventually fitted out a former club in West Hollywood with a huge room, equipped with teddy bears, for group sessions, and a padded cell. Patients were monitored by two-way mirrors and closed-circuit cameras.

Some of this he described in The Primal Scream. Applicants had to submit an autobiography, and those with a weak heart were not accepted. When John Lennon sent a copy to The Who’s Pete Townshend, he said: “I think this is the last trip — read this and see if you recognise yourself !” SCREAM: Arthur Janov And to Spike Milligan: “I think this book might ‘turn you on’ as they say.” Although eminent British psychiatrist Anthony Storr — among many others — criticised Janov’s work, noting that human insecurity is such that anybody who proclaims to be right can attract a large following, Janov appeared undaunted by his detractors.

In 1980 he divorced Vivian, who continued the Institute, and set up another nearby with his second wife, France Daunic. He continued to practise up until his death.

He is survived by his wife and two sons. A daughter predeceased him. © Telegraph