An eclectic approach to regressional techniques

Abstract

SUMMARY Regressive techniques are not new – Freud employed hypnoregression before developing psychoanalysis. Ferenczi probably holds the record for the longest regressive marathon, and Donald Winnicott appears to have published the first description of a “birth primal” in 1949. In the USA, two of Wilhelm Reich's students, Lowen and Peris, exerted a major influence on Arthur Janov, who has since popularised a three-week period of intensive regression. Most psychotherapists using primal techniques are more eclectic than Janov claims to be. The major reasons for the revival of intensive regressive techniques are that they may be a way to: 1) locate and change continuing interference from those pre-verbal experiences which produce neurotic symptoms 2) change psychotic experiences into growth experiences rather than use drugs to dampen symptoms. There are two areas of concern around the speed of regression to primary processes, namely, proceeding too rapidly or moving too slowly. If a person regresses too quickly into painful preverbal memories, he may either (a)get so frightened by the apparent chaos of the psychosomatic primal process that he withdraws prematurely thereby remaining a psychological cripple, or (b) falls prematurely into psychotic behaviour, which requires in-patient care in an institution which can support and guide the eruption of psychotic ideation and behaviour. Unfortunately, such institutions are currently in short supply. On the other hand, if a person proceeds too slowly through infantile regression, he may get “bogged down” in either intense psychosomatic pain, paralysing fear, or take flight into unproductive, repetitive acting-out behaviour. Eclectic techniques which generally can control the speed of regression include: 1) progressive desensitisation of psychosis-producing experiences; 2) establishing an especially strong rapport with a positive maternal figure either in the person of a therapist, another client, or the archetype of the “Great Mother” via dreams, art therapy, guided fantasy hypnosis, etc. The intense psychosomatic pain which is the most dramatic and fearful part of primal regression can be managed. One technique balances primal pain with primal pleasure – pleasure either old or new. “Old pleasure” involves remembering intensely pleasurable infantile experiences, which are usually more repressed than painful memories. “New pleasure” involves experiences such as skin massage from other group members; such experiences may be an antidote to a chronic lack of skin contact during infancy. The intense fear which usually accompanies primal regression can be largely managed by teaching the person to switch systematically between the four Jungian functions of Sensing, Intuiting, Feeling and Thinking and by exposing persons to maps of the unconscious such as those of Stanislav Grof and John Perry.