AB: My first question is, this is awfully deterministic stuff and I was wondering how you
address yourself to the question, if it were alI
fixed at conception what happen to the free will, the voluntary, the sense of
the control that people have within themselves?
GF: What I was trying to describe
this morning the way she perceived my contribution and she used her hands to
begin to demonstrate what she meant and it's a useful
way of beginning to answer your question. It's as if
you visualize the two gametes as circles, one slightly bigger than the other as
indeed the egg is, and the sperm fits inside very neatly and there's a closure
and it's comfortable. If one of the gametes is off-center, then the lock doesn't go quite right. If just one part is out of synch, the rest of the circle is fine, but as there
is growth, that one piece that's out of place gets bigger and bigger in its
ramifications.
AB: So the consciousness is both
cellular, in that sense genetic, and modifiable as we work on it, but there is
a given there.
GF: There's a given. There's
an imprint, there's a trace, there's a remnant. These are words but there's an imprint. I think that's
probably the most useful word, and like a clock going round, every time it hits
that piece that's out of synch, it makes a indentation as a bigger groove and
it gets sore because it's hurt all the time. Then that vulnerability as
sensitivity ramifies to the surface as we develop, but all on the way there are
ways of modifying it and ...
AB: And re-working.
GF: . . . and re-working so, like
what Zell says from England, it's not instinctual
anger, it's innate and that if the conception is rape but the raped woman is
loving and incredibly aware of the fetus being damaged in some way, she can
maybe stop smoking, stop drinking, eat well to try and nurture and make up for
it.
AB: So it's
not only modifying, it's also expansive but there is a basic material that
probably is fixed.
GF: Yes. I would say that and also, the state of consciousness of both parents affects
the gametes profoundly. Our second child is dramatically different from our
first because I'd just been appointed to Harvard, got
a lot of income, English instead of French.
AB: That's
the point Verny makes a lot in his book. The next
question that I've been pondering about for a very
long time, it came up strongly again, is the resilience of the fetus and the
embryo. Do you want to talk about that?
GF: As you saw in the Swedish
documentary, 65% of fertilized eggs don't reach the
womb wall. They die in the tube, so that certainly the ones that survive are
strong.
So that we're already by the time of implant a selected species. You
might say it's the survival of the fittest, the entire
syndrome, but even then there's a weaning out of the damaged ones in the form
of miscarriages, deaths before birth, still-borns,
and sudden infant death syndrome. Some of the SID syndrome
are a consequence of an additional trauma like reaction to pertussis injection in an infant made vulnerable by an
anoxic birth. There's been research that William Emerson did
that seems to show that.
AB: What's
your opinion about these prenatal interventions to save a fetus that may be in
fact defective, rather than to let it die naturally?
GF: Well I personally have very
strong feelings about this. For me the quality of life is more important than
the numerological number of beings. We have enough beings on the planet. That's difficult for a sterile couple who want to adopt or want to
have a test tube baby but I've said it publicly, academically, in university,
at home, that a test tube baby isn't necessarily the treatment of choice for
infertility, that the woman especially, may still have on-going, unresolved
issues over her sexuality and femininity, and that a baby doesn't resolve that
issue. The quality of life of that baby is going to interact negatively
with her, so that she's going to be less fulfilled,
and, indeed, we've had three women in
AB: This is
basically a psychiatric question. All these symptoms
that appear as conversion symptoms and when you prod them primally,
you just let hysteria be full-blown. Is it better to have an
hysteric on our hands or somebody who's got a rash?
GF: Well, my clinical experience is
that that type of hysteria is a transition to hopefully something healthier. The criticism which you just heard me apologize for which was levelled at me, that it was categorically damaging, what I
did yesterday, unprofessional, in that I ought to have taken people very, very
slowly to where they wanted to go, and that that's the only way that this
process is valid or works or should be permitted ... and I've got to look at
that.
AB: I think you do have to look at it.
But I want you to know that I do not feel that
anything that happened was irresponsible.1 felt there were enough people there
who could help. No one was left unattended. In fact it would have been lovely to have a feedback session
where people could share what experiences . . . but we would still be there.
GF: That's
right, exactly.
AB: If the press had walked in on
this primal workshop scene, how would you have explained what was going on?
GF: If I knew the press were coming I
wouldn't allow the scene.
AB: But supposing you didn't know the press were coming, suppose some stranger, or
the thing was set up so you didn't know. Essentially
I'm asking for you to elaborate, how do you explain what you do to the layman?
GF: Well, once a month at home I run
workshops for professional people, spouses of clients in therapy and the press
and frequently someone will come along like Blanch Delfugee
who's the biographer of our prime minister, and she
stayed for therapy. The ABC, our broadcast commission, "Sixty Minutes,"
have all approached me to do a documentary and my answer has always been: "I'd be delighted to do that but you send your
cameramen, your producers, and they must do a workshop with me. They must be on
the floor and have an experience. They must hear my didactic presentation, see
the film 'Long Ago Hurt' and lie for at least two hours and have myself and my
seven staff sit with them for at least half-an-hour each, and then have a
go-around, post group, and then we'll consider the production."
There was an article
recently in
AB:
A couple of
questions about going to birth and beyond, before. Do you see that as a necessary
part of the primal work?
GF: Well, over the years, in my
intensive, the client has 6 hours of therapy a day and we're on 24-hour call,
and in the first week my staff knows that they're just to sit and observe, by
and large, and allow some opening up and letting go and the client just finds
his or her way with transference, with the situation and the new process and
themselves, but everyone seems to primal like their thumb print, it's very
individual.
The subgroups and categories, a lot of people go
sequentially back through time. Others go right back to some initial event and
some of them even connect it. But then they'll come
back up to second line or birth for a long time but that very first descent is
to where the trauma is. They may not be able to get back to it for weeks or months
but it's a clue as to where they eventually have to go
back to.
AB: So you see it as an up and down
kind of thing, not as peeling?
GF: Some are like that. The people
with longer labors and with drugs that interfere with the process, they tend to
do that, people that come up into their heads. They have to because of the forceps or anoxia or whatever. They tend to do it very
onion-peeling,very slowly
back, but the majority of people do this,and they can
say "I was on various levels. I felt distinctively I was in the crib and
then for a moment it was birth. Even, I think, I was something earlier and I
watch it but. . ." It's that kind of triple level
experience.
AB: What about so-called adult
traumas, intense recent stuff and relatively natural beginnings?
GF: What do you mean natural
beginnings?
AB:
Untraumatized beginnings.
GF: Yes, well I don't
tend to see those people, frankly. I've always said
that if the trauma happens after the acquisition of language, the clients will
instinctively find their way to an analyst.
AB: That's an important point. I happen to
agree with that and I happen to believe that our people, the people we can help
best, are the preverbally traumatized people, and I'm very glad you're saying that because I think that's a
very important issue.
GF: In fact, I often tell them that they're too well for primal and refer them to a colleague
whom I know is very good at that sort of talking therapy. I don't
accept everybody who comes for therapy. It actually damages the schizophrenic
and the manic-depressive, I feel, makes them worse potentially. The borderline
state I don't take any longer because I'm getting too
old. It takes a lot of energy. William Emerson is
brilliant at it. He's exquisite with borderline
people. I saw him work. He's magnificent. I have a lot
of love and compassion but I don't have the patience.
AB: A couple of things: A lot of what I heard you say yesterday, what I even heard
you demonstrate, was metaphor.
GF:
Example.
AB: The way you refer to your
struggle to be professionally accepted as a tight cervix; the relationship of
the hands; the way you primal your conception, is not
necessarily a real happening but rather a metaphoric, symbolic expression
executed through movement.
GF:
Yes. Absolutely, No
question about that at all. None whatever, I think you're
right. I don't believe, except for what I've seen as four
distinct, separate sperm movements-the flipping of the legs together, the
doubling up and bending in the middle, the corkscrew movement of the head going
into the sperm, and the sort of rolling right around the whole body, not just
the back legs, they seem to be very specific for sperm movements and this seems
to be specific for sperm agitation.
AB: Very physiological in a sense but
you can activate them through movement and into consciousness through movement.
I think that's what happened to me yesterday in the
afternoon workshop, a physical-conceptual expression.
GF: Sure, and the egg behaviorand movement seem to be very still, quiet, rounded,
what looks like fetal birth but there are very tiny little movements of the
fingers, finally, and the breathing is very shallow. They barely breathe at
all.
AB: Let's shift to politics. You've
achieved a modicum of credibility and you've talked about how
one does get credibility and I'd like you to really say more about it.
GF: Well, I suppose it's been easier for me having a medical background, having
a degree from Harvard, having one from McGill, having one from
I didn't
know that at the time but it was an important lesson that I learned, that
people will come to resolve their dynamics at a significant moment in their
lives, not mine, but that if I am genuine and real and give incredibly good
service, the community will let them know at the top. You know it gets back
through one of my client's fathers who is a judge or
an obstetrician or whatever. He goes home and has dinner and says "Hey
Dad, I really feel good because of Dr. Farrant's
session today," and the father, depending on his situation, will than say
across to this person at that level, "What's this Farrant
guy doing?" and that's when that person's wife comes into therapy, because
he's talking at dinner. It's the communal, grassroots
patient referral connection, eventually to the top. When someone like Carl Wood
went public, the press were on my door in droves.
AB: You mentioned names. You show
pictures and so forth. Do you have express permission?
GF: Oh, yes. Absolutely.
Carl asked me to take the video of him.
AB: So you have their cooperation and
support.
GF: Carl is incredibly grateful to me
for primal therapy. It altered his life, not just his career, and he's gone
public on press, radio, television, about primal therapy which is bordering on
advertising for me, but because Carl is doing it, the AMA never questioned me,
ever.
AB: So the advocacy is coming out of
the experience.
GF: That's where I come back to saying that
if I have integrity and work with my client like I would anyone else and he
gets meaningful mileage out of my therapy, he's going to have a positive
transference.
AB: How do we relate to our patients
in the community sense, deal with the transference problems and I wonder if you
have any thoughts about that?
GF: Well, I feel very strongly that
there is transference in the primal situation and that indeed, there ought to
be. I expect it and when it's not coming I make sure
it comes. I bring it up as an issue and topic and both aspects are difficult at
times to deal with. Sometimes the love aspect is more difficult than the hate. But the safety valves are in my center, from the very
beginning. I think it's a credit to me and the place
that I've had the same staff for 13 years. No one's
wanted to go away, whatever. And this is partly
because twice a week we have staff feeling groups and once a week every member
of the staff has to be sat for by someone else in a rotating way. And the third thing we have every week, we take turns being
the facilitator and the rest of the staff are clients and we have our own
session. So three times a week we're on the floor and
in the staff feeling groups, we protect each other by saying "I think
you're getting a bit close to that person. You have a sexual feeling about them
or I notice you haven't sat for him for 3 weeks now.
Don't you like him or is there something about him that reminds you of a
relative or whatever it is?" And I pick up my
blind spots as I contribute to helping them through theirs. That's
one way we have of dealing with transference issues and countertransference.
Absolutely.
AB: Thank you very much.
Published with
permission from the original link: http://www.primal-page.com/farrant.htm