Inside Primal Therapy

Abstract

Medical models demonstrate their inadequacy for supporting a theory of reexperience by viewing the phenomenon as cathartic discharge of repressed material Their temporal focus is too narrow. Primal therapy illustrates how distortions inevitably arise It punitively construes emotion and fails to account for valid unconscious feeling. It violates basic ontogenetic and phylogenetic requirements for an organic theory of feeling. Its claim to cure is based on a view of people as robots.