Overall, this whole thing is getting to be too much of a red herring that distracts from the central issue: Janov doesn’t have good evidence. And you didn’t really address too many of my questions aside from which philosophy of science you followed and that you don’t know what a good measure of efficacy is for therapies.
3.
Though I have independently studied a lot in psychology, I have no formal training in it. I have responded to my own study and observations, and talk with other people in the field. That's what my education here is based on.
I would strongly recommend reading a text on clinical research design and statistics. With no formal training or education, I would be very careful coming out with bold assertions to the effect of "we just don't know enough to study the effectiveness of psychotherapies", which seems to be the linchpin to your view on primal scream (from what I gather from your posts, that's "well, we just shouldn't write primal scream off because we just don't know enough about the methods of generally testing therapy efficacy to do so"). That's just flat out not true, and the onus is on Janov to posit a testable claim or else BACK OFF from making such confident assertions.
This, to me, is a lot like being hesitant to write off Descartes’ idea of animal spirit human locomotion (spirits coursing through our bodies to help move our muscles) because “well, we just don’t know enough about testing presence and dynamics of animal spirits in people to know for sure”.
Of course, our tools have limitations, but these are not the kind of limitations that permit making a blanket statement that we are rendered incapable of ever properly testing these sorts of ideas. It would take too much time and energy to explain here at the length and level of detail that you require all the reasons
why we do have a pretty darned good idea about testing therapy efficacy (i.e., the tenets of basic research methods as applied to this type of research), but thankfully, there are books that do that quite well in several hundred pages.
I recommend reading and attempting to understand the key concepts in Kazdin's
Research Design in Clinical Psychology before forming too strong an opinion on this.
3.
Janov claims that the relationship between repression and symptoms is dynamic. He believes that curing symptoms usually only equates to pushing the impact of the trauma deeper into the body/psyche, which equates to swapping one symptom for another [though the 'other symptom' may not be immediately apparent - observable], because the fundamental 'pressure' is still there.
First, how he gets "pushing impact of trauma deeper into the body/psyche" from symptom alleviation (or even curing, which is very rare) is not only a question-begging non-sequitur, it is not amenable to falsification. If the treated sx (sx = symptoms) were alleviated and other sx cropped up, Janov would say, “Aha, see! The trauma was pushed deeper inside!”. If sx were alleviated and no other sx appeared, Janov would say, “Aha! He’s exhibiting the symptom of repression!”. If no sx were alleviated, Janov would say, “Aha! I was right! He needs primal scream!”.
This, amigo, is an unbeatable system, and it’s rooted in classic Freudian illogic. The onus is on Janov to come up with a testable system of ideas; it is not the responsibility of mental health research to develop in a direction that makes possible the testing of Janov’s ideas or any other fanciful notion. And we aren’t still suspending judgment on Descartes’ idea of animal spirits moving people around because we haven’t found a good way to test the idea of spirits (and worst of all, perceiving this as “well, scientists just don’t know enough yet to fully understand the nature of animal spirits”). We either have compelling reasons backed by evidence for taking a claim seriously, or we don’t.
Is this wrong or right? I don't know (and yes 'I don't know' is good enough when it's the truth).
You claimed in a previous post to know that overt measures were not an appropriate way to test therapy efficacy. I asked what you think is an appropriate way to gauge this. You answer by saying you don’t know. So you claim to be able to recognize what is NOT appropriate, but you have no idea what is or could be appropriate. What, if anything, would ever convince you?
I believe that it is true that the relationship between observable symptoms and therapies does not specifically prove the effectiveness of a treatment - unless, your goal is specifically to reduce the observable symptoms (and obviously there is a place for this with extreme conditions. I said earlier (in other words) that the 'subjectivity' of getting better does not apply to extreme and obvious conditions that common sense shows must be dealt with so the individual can function in life....severe mental and physiological conditions I consider another issue).
Stop using the word “prove” in this context. Again, you really need to check out a text on clinical research methods.
Symptom alleviation may or may not be an indicator that the underlying core problem or cause has been rubbed out. It goes both ways. And subjective report can and does markedly improve with sx alleviation in many people being treated for a variety of mental health issues. This goes back to triangulation: we gather multiple converging lines of evidence for “getting better” using the information that we have available to us, and to dismiss these as just peripheral to effectiveness because we can’t comprehensively capture someone else’s qualia is unjustified. Doesn’t mean that the core problem is “cured” per se (nobody said that!), but getting back to Janov, you are giving him way more credit than he is due.
When I say "you can't prove the therapy" I mean "you can't prove a therapy is curative in ultimate positive terms". You can never prove that you are not ultimately swapping one problem with another. Whether or not the changes observed are a final net improvement, and to what degree, is subjective outside the extremes. And whether or not any given therapy is better or worse than another would require a subjective perspective on what the desired outcomes should be…
Nobody said anything about anything being curative or definitive proof. Red herring. With problem swapping, “can’t prove it” doesn’t equate to “believe Janov” or “waffle in ambiguity over Janov’s claims”. Again, Descartes’ animal spirits. And again, triangulation: subjective self-report complementing other lines of observable evidence.
My point is that if you want to do a comparitive evaluation of PT to other therapies, you have to respect that PT at least claims to be doing something new - removing the trauma.
No, I don’t have to respect what Janov claims PT to be able to do when he has no sound evidence for his claim. EMDR claims to be able to remove the trauma, too. And so did Mesmer’s magnetic baths.
As for my perspective on science? Realism, to the best of my ability. That's all there is. I certainly don't believe that science means "ignore what you can see naturally for yourself if it cannot be reduced to data". (not to suggest that you yourself do that).
Nor does science mean take seriously everything that comes down the pipe.
All I want to say to the professionals out there is this: Please do your homework on the regressive process (as in get your face right in there, and watch it happening); if it's basically real, like Janov describes it, then you may have to accept that conventional therapy has key limits that PT does not (?) - the quality of Janov's particular methodology notwithstanding.
Even granting (for a moment) the existence or non-existence of regressive processes, however wildly defined, this does not say anything per se about the effectiveness of primal scream. Apples and oranges. PS could be the wrong approach, no matter how much surface sense you draw out. Further, this would not necessarily speak toward limitations of certain conventional therapies (e.g., CBT). You need to be a bit more careful with your logic here.
