AFTER THE TIDE of pseudo-psychological half-theories of the late sixties, many critics have refused to take Arthur Janov seriously. But Janov's contribution is unusually promising, for it suggest a combination of psychological theory with theories of social consciousness and of linguistics.

His first volume, The Primal Scream, published three year ago, provoked intense personal reactions, both in those to whose common sense Janov appealed and in those who claimed the book was unmitigated nonsense. Almost all the people I know who have read the book were visibly upset by it. None were psychology majors and, therefore, they were all relatively unaccustomed to "intellectualizing" about psychology. While reading Janov's chapter on "The Nature of Feeling," I discovered I was reliving, in rather vivid detail, several childhood experiences I would have thought I'd entirely forgotten. I am not surprised by those who, as a matter of common sense, immediately accept the complete system of Janov's ideas.

The great usefullness of The Primal Scream, though, stems from the theoretical issues Janov raises. Unfortunately, his critics rarely discuss him on theoretical grounds. Competing psychologists smirk and point out connections between Primal Theory and older theories, most of which Janov acknowledges in The Primal Scream. Some claim that various other therapies can be helpful and hardly address the substance of Janov's work. Some critics strike at Janov's often naive language, undoubtedly a vulnerable point but not an excuse for avoiding the usefulness of his ideas. Janov clearly leaves himself open to such criticism, saying things like, "I had an insight into paranoia the other day while driving," or, more important for his theory, "Well people will logically produce a well society." His apparent simple-mindedness obscures his far more insightful constructions elsewhere. I think Janov's tools should be taken seriously, even if at times, he handles them clumsily.

JANOV'S PICTURE of human psychology appears relatively straight-forward. People are creatures with their species's characteristic needs. "Need" is a "total physiologic state," the physical demand for certain requirements and the mental ramifications of our biological functions. He says:

We are all creatures of need. We are born needing, and the vast majority of us die after a lifetime of struggle with many of our needs unfulfilled. These needs are not excessive--to be fed, kept warm and dry, to grow and develop at our own pace, to be held and caressed, and to be stimulated. These Primal needs are the central reality of the infant.

Needs must be fulfilled if a child is to grow into a healthy adult.

For one reason or another, parents may interfere with their children's expression of their genuine needs. A father, for example, whose parents would never listen to him, may force his children to serve as his constant audience, frustrating their need to speak and to develop intellectually. The children, needing the father's love and depending on him for other kinds of support, confront a choice--talk and incur the father's resentment, or remain silent and preserve the semblance of love.

The need, in this case for self-expression, remains. It not only lies embedded in some psychophysical memory state, but it affects the person's overt behavior and his mental and physical health. The build-up of unexpressed needs produces tension, the human's natural defense against feeling the pain of being unloved for what he is--a person with typical human needs in the particular form in which he expresses them. The neurotic no longer feels his need. His disease is neurosis, the crippling of feeling.

Feeling, like all elements in Janov's picture of human behavior, involves not only mental awareness but the biological processes accompanying or underlying that awareness. Feeling is sensation plus a correct awareness of the origin of that sensation. Our stomachs may tighten if we need to cry. We feel that need if we are aware both of muscles tightening and of the act we need to perform. If a mother tells her son, "Big boys don't cry," for enough years, she may cause his psychophysiological system to block the connection between stomach-tightening and the need to cry out. Whenever his stomach tightens, he attributes it to indigestion. The result is neurotic: when the boy needs to cry, he senses his stomach tightening, but he is unaware of his need. Thus, he no longer feels. He expresses his need, incorrectly, as the need for Alka-Seltzer.

THE CONSEQUENCES of neurosis follow from the nature of the disease. The neurotic stops trying to fulfill his need because he can no longer express it. Not wishing to antagonize an unloving parent, he represses awareness of his need. Instead of behaving according to real needs, he behaves according to contrived and artificial wants which he turns to in order to relieve the pressure of needs. The pursuit of objects transformed into symbols becomes the rationale for his behavior; "symbolic behavior" seeks the release of inner tension.

The form which symbolic behavior assumes depends on several factors including the neurotic's physical constitution, social environment, and economic class. In the case of the child who never was allowed to speak freely, the child might develop natural talents, if he has them, for singing or politics in order to capture the audience response his parents never offered. He may find himself talking compulsively with friends or whining to be the first to answer questions in school. With older people or people who remind him of his father, he may develop an unnaturally soft voice, so that people must constantly tell the neurotic to "speak up."

There is no way to predict causes automatically from symptoms. Only by laying bare the source of his own symbolic behavior can the neurotic work towards escaping his system and act in accordance with his real needs. He is finally freed from the futile struggle for the love of a parent unable to offer love.

PRIMAL THERAPY attempts to uncover the source of symbolic behavior, to determine the source of unresolved tension within each patient. One source of tension may be the kind of parental deprivation I've described; another may be unavoidable deprivation, brought about perhaps by the prolonged illness of a parent. The purpose of the cure is to enable the patient to experience the suppressed pain resulting from his inability to evoke love, the voluntary attempt by another to fulfill his needs. As pain is re-lived the patient feels formerly repressed connections between sensations, the causes of sensations, and the incidents responsible for disconnecting the original sensation and his awareness of need.

The experience of this need is the recognition of love's absence plus the body's crying out for whatever it needed. By mentally pinpointing the psychophysical need and by physically acknowledging it through tears, baby talk, or whatever form of communication is appropriate for the time of childhood deprivation, the patient frees himself from the impules to release tension through symbolic behavior. This is accompanied by physical convulsions as muscles loosen after a lifetime of tension and resistence. The physical reaction--the all-out cry for fulfillment--is the Primal Scream. It is a reconnection of mind and body, and physical changes--in voice pitch, height, breast size, and so on--often accompany the cure and are specifically connected with each patient's neurosis.

Janov makes considerable strides beyond liberal psychotherapy, although sometimes he seems unclear as to the theoretical nature of the advance. In practical terms, he is satisfied by his cures. But his attempts to explain why are often agonizingly circular: I'm right because it works; it works because I'm right. By understanding the nature of Janov's stumbling advance, it is easier to articulate the shortcomings of his theory. Most of these weaknesses appear more explicitly in The Primal Revolution, a new and less formally structured book written to answer questions Janov believes The Primal Scream leaves unanswered. The crucial weakness lies in a distinction Janus fails to make--a distinction between awareness and expression--and from his failure to fully understand the implications of the conclusion that consciousness of real needs depends upon the ability to express them.