On Alice Miller's Interview In Psychologie Heute
By John A. Speyrer

Like others who read Alice Miller's Communication To My Readers, I wanted to more fully understand why she disavowed J. Konrad Stettbacher's 4 step method of primal therapy as well as the more typical therapist directed primal therapy. As far as I was concerned, the Communication was inadequate to the task since there seemed to be some important element missing in her explanation; to me something had seemed incomplete because of the amount of energy she had used to disassociate herself from primal therapy. Adding up all of the reasons she gave did not throw sufficient light on the reason for such an emphatic disapproval. In spite of all of the reasons she gave, to me she did not seem to be completely convincing.

At first there was no response from readers of the Primal Psychotherapy Page, but after a month or so a number of well thought out letters were sent to this website. I was happy to discover that I was not the only one who questioned her given reasons for the rejection of primal therapy, although a number of readers were satisfied with Alice Miller's explanation.

It was not until Ruediger Otto sent me the interview with Alice Miller conducted by Berlin psychoanalyst Gerhard Tushy, that I felt that I had enough information to resolve the question, at least to my own satisfaction. The interview appeared in the April, 1995, issue of the German magazine, Heute Psychologie. I immediately wrote to its publisher, asking permission to reproduce a translated copy of the interview on the Primal Psychotherapy Page. Unfortunately, I received a reply informing me that such permission could not be granted.

So, not being able to print the Miller interview itself, I decided to do the next best thing and make the interview the basis for a review of those parts of it concerning Miller's turning away from primal therapy which were not covered in her Communication.

In the interview entitled, Das Psycho-Geschaeft und die Wuerde des Patienten (The Psycho-Transaction and The Dignity of the Patient) Alice Miller expressed her belief that primal therapy had become obsolete. Besides the weaknesses in the therapy which she well recognized in her Communication, she felt there are more serious faults in such an intense abreactive experience. She said that Freud himself, in 1890, turned away from using intense carhartic experiences because the good results were only temporary.

But Alice Miller's abreactive experiences in primal therapy did not even have temporary good results! Towards the end of the three weeks' beginning phase of primal therapy, with an unnamed therapist, she could no longer sleep and was suffering from severe anxiety which at times, she said, verged on the psychotic. The intense abreactions of the intensive had dredged up more early traumatic feelings than could be worked through. Emotional suffering had escalated to such an extent that for the first time in her life she had thoughts of suicide. Throughout the ordeal she wanted no medication. She described the primal therapy intensive as a trap because she felt that she had not been adequately prepared for what would happen during that period.

In desperation Miller turned to Stettbacher and his recommendation of using the writing technique of primal therapy which he describes on pages 69-76 in Making Sense of Suffering. After writing hundreds of pages, her symptoms began to subside and order began to arise out of the chaos triggered by the three weeks of intensive therapy. Stettbacher's advice had made it easier for her to live with her still demolished defenses.

Because of the help she received from Stettbacher in recommending the "writing therapy" she was won over to his variety of primal therapy. Since Stettbacher had told her that he would be training therapists in the future, she began recommending his 4-step method of primal therapy.

However, Alice Miller believes that it takes more than just experiencing early traumas for primal therapy to be successful. She said that a relationship with a therapist is what allows the traumas to resolve themselves. This is a belief with which many self-primalers will probably disagree.

She was asked by the interviewer, if, as a result of having had both primal therapies, had she been able to access her early traumatic memories? Her answer was, "No." She stated that one reason she went into primal therapy was to confirm the hunches and assumptions which she had arrived at through her water-color painting which had previously opened up the possibility of early victimization. But in primal therapy she had received only dim inklings of those early memories and they were never complete. In the interview, she says that she was now skeptical of all therapies which use the intensive phase to lower defenses and which emphasise the re-living of early traumas.

When the interview took place she was more beholden than ever to the opinion that more than abreacting is needed for trauma resolution. The cathartic track is the wrong track, she asserted, for the reason that too many defenses are lowered than what is necessary. More emphasis, she said, should be placed on the here and now and less on abreacting. The feelings that were kept repressed become too powerful as they are released suddenly and those pains are not easily integrated thereafter. Those unfelt unintegrated feelings result in constant suffering from chronic tension. The primal patient then begins searching for years for the "right pain" and for the reason for his "justifiable anger" in an attempt to free himself from his unrest. The act outs continue, but instead of questioning the theories and promises of their therapists, primal therapy patients torment themselves with self reproach and feel that their failure is their fault.

The experience which Alice Miller had with primal therapy is not typical.
(See the three weeks intensive therapy experiences of Theresa S. Alexander recounted in Facing the Wolf for a more typical and almost gentle primal therapy result). However, it is not the therapy which is the source of the unleashed sometimes disintegrating feelings. When there is a horrendous amount of primal pain and more material is brought up than can be integrated, physical and emotional discomfort will be experienced similar to those Miller suffered.

Her experiences in the intensive phase of primal therapy were different from those of the average patient and cannot be regarded as what one would expect to encounter during primal therapy. I do not understand why, in spite of her desperation, Miller refused to take medication which would have brought her unleashed and overwhelming primal pain under control. Tranquilizers/anti-depressants would have enhanced her ability to feel some of the overload which was causing her dispair and suffering, so turning away from the one logical solution to her problem is to me, inexplicable.

If everyone seeking primal therapy or other regressive therapies had the same defense levels and the same amount of repressed early trauma, we could expect that one's level of discomfort could be easily predicted. But we are all different, with dissimilar sources and quantities of pain and with different types and levels of defenses. All of these variables influence the type of outcome we can expect in the intensive phase of the therapy.

The types and levels of one's defenses are limitless and can result in many acting out behaviors, even those which can be beneficial to ourselves and society. We can become inspired to "save the children" when we are the child who needs saving. Defenses can lead us into the "helping professions" when what we actually want is "help" for our child selves.

The techniques of inducing primal regression are becoming more and more widely known but such knowledge does not a primal therapist make. The person who does not have a deep knowledge of psychopathology and who does not realize that more pain is being released than can begin to be integrated in a session or two can lead his patient into deep water. Dr. Arthur Janov has cautioned us an infinite number of times about the dangers of inadequately trained primal therapists, and even self-primalers can get into problems during periods of overload.

So how could Alice Miller have anything good to say about primal therapy after she suffered so much during her three weeks' intensive? How could she in all honesty, speak favorably, about primal? At times, the therapy can be rough, especially for those who have experienced a horrendous birth, intra-uterine trauma, early sexual abuse and/or early surgeries. I believe the message of her Communication is to warn unsuspecting persons about the anxiety and depression which may arise during the therapy. But because of her prestige and the popularity of her books, her message could have the effect of turning away many who otherwise would have benefited from regular primal or self-primal therapy.

Her story can still have a happy ending. I do not believe that her involvement with primal therapy is over as those disabling symptoms triggered during her intensive can still be slowly felt and integrated with the result of improved mood and functioning. I wait impatiently for Alice Miller's next book!

The position of Dr. Miller with regard to primal therapy continues to generate interest.
A number of years ago Sam Turton wrote an article about the changing position of Alice Miller and primal. It may be read at Alice Miller and Primal Therapy. On her website she states, that she presently shares ". . . the opinion of Arthur Janov who always affirmed, that primal therapy without the assistance of a well informed and compassionate therapist can be very dangerous. . . ."
On Dr. Arthur Janov's website appears, "We are glad to see that Alice Miller came around to recommending against self-primalling." The article continues,

Besides the fact that it is important to have somebody compassionate to get to feeling, the clinical reason why self-primalling is dangerous is that it means trying to descend to feelings that are below the level of repression. They are in place for a very good reason and should not be tampered with without professional help. The result is almost inevitably abreaction. The defense system in all its brilliance deceives the self-primaller into believing he/she is having a Primal by giving it the allure of a feeling, when it is pure abreaction — the discharge of energy of the feeling without connection.