Talk:Primal therapy/Archive 4

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recent edits

Skoojal, stop undoing my recent edits. It's important to at least try to have some kind of coherence and flow to the text. If we remove the word "nevertheless", then the paragraph goes headlong into a change of topic without any warning. It ends up being very disjointed.

The word "neverhtless" is not some kind of insidious way for me to insert my POV into the article. It has nothing to do with POV. Whenever you have a drasatic change of topic in a paragraph, its required by elementary rules of usage to precede the change with a phrase like "neverhteless" or "on the other hand" etc.

If we can't agree on this point, then we should just revert the article back to its original state. However poor was the quality of the prose then, it was preferable to sudden changes in topic and statements about what primal advocates believe etc.

Twerges (talk) 10:24, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the text is coherent enough. The word "nevertheless" is not necessary, and it insinuates something that I strongly disagree with. I am going to be making many more changes to this article, and this is just the start. Skoojal (talk) 10:27, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

primal therapy prominent during the early 1970s?

Primal therapy was prominent during the early 1970s. In 1971, Janov's institute got 3,000 applications per week; janov was featured on the Tonight Show; Janov's books sold millions of copies; Janov's books were featured in full-page ads in the NY review of books; Primal therapy was mentioned in college textbooks; John Lennon famously underwent primal therapy; there were more than 50 spinoff clinics; etc.

None of that was the case in 1979. I don't believe Janov's book prisoners of pain got that kind of attention. Most of the spinoffs clinics closed down or were failing. That's why I think we should specify that primal therapy was prominent during the early 1970s.

It would be impossible to find a scholarly reference to attest to these things because there is no scholarly work on the history of primal therapy.Twerges (talk) 10:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Do you have proof that primal therapy wasn't prominent in the late 1970s? I've seen numerous books written during that period which attack it - there would be no point to doing that if it wasn't still a noteworthy phenomenon. Skoojal (talk) 10:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should say it was "especially prominent" during the early 1970s. If that's not OK then I don't mind if we leave it as it is. It's not terribly important to specify which part of the decade it was prominent.Twerges (talk) 19:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

The fewer the sources the article uses, the more general and the less specific the claims it should make. To say that primal therapy was prominent in the 1970s is more general and less contentious than saying that it was prominent in the early 1970s. Skoojal (talk) 21:34, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Reverting entire introduction

Apparently it's impossible to gain consensus about any of this, so I just reverted the article back to before I modified the introduction.

I wrote the older introduction, and the only reason I wrote it that way was because I was in a tremendous hurry. It's very poorly written. However the article had been so eviscerated that the it no longer said anything about primal therapy except that it is VERY BAD, so I quickly wrote the old introduction, knowing that it was poorly written but expecting to improve it later. However any improvements I make apparently must have words removed with no regard for flow or paragraph cohesion, until it's even worse. It's important that the prose not deteriorate any further.

I've just reverted the article to my old introduction. Please do not revert my reversion! It would be senseless edit warring to insist that my new introduction must remain when I don't want it to.Twerges (talk) 01:35, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I do not agree with your changes, and I'm disappointed that so far, you haven't made any convincing arguments to defend them. Skoojal (talk) 08:07, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

This article is not about Arthur Janov

Skoojal, you have removed every sentence about primal therapy from the introduction. Every sentence now says "Arthur Janov claims..." or "Arthur Janov believes..." or "Janov's first book..." etc, because you object to saying anything like "one of the claims of primal therapy is..."

This is an article about primal therapy. Obviously Janov's claims are relevant to it, but the introduction should say things about primal therapy and not just about Janov and what he believes.

Also, this paragraph:

The absence of independent peer-reviewed outcome studies (or experimental clinical trials) to substantiate these claims led to the therapy falling out of favor in academic and psychotherapeutic circles. Primal Therapy is listed at the Discredited psychological treatments and tests psychological poll [1]. Janov and his associates have continued practicing the therapy at his Center[1] in Santa Monica, California.

...now lacks even the most basic flow or paragraph cohesion. It looks like it was written by a dropout. It's far beneath the rhetorical standards of an encyclopedia entry.

Nevertheless, you oppose any attempt to make obvious corrections to flow and cohesion, because you claim that linking words like "nevertheless" are somehow insulting to Janov.

What I'm getting at is this: the introduction cannot be a bunch of disjointed sentences with drastically inadequate prose style which do not mention primal thearpy.

This is an encyclopdia article about primal therapy. As such, the prose style must be at least minimally adequate for an encyclopedia, and the introduction must discuss the topic of the article.

Since it's not possible to gain consensus about this, and there's nobody else editing the article, I'll have to request outside comments. Twerges (talk) 20:08, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Unless you have evidence that there are primal therapists whose views are a) notable and b) different from Janov's, saying 'Arthur Janov' instead of 'primal therapy' is perfectly reasonable. I wasn't aware that encyclopedia entries had 'rhetorical standards', so pardon me if the article doesn't meet them. Skoojal (talk) 03:36, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Can we shorten this quotation

This is the quotation from the LA times at the beginning of the criticism section:

"Dr. Janov is an impressive writer and thinker. Certainly, It is worth reading and considering,” (a quotation that was used on subsequent covers of some future editions of The Primal Scream), however, he also wrote earlier in the article that: "to question the ‘truth’ of primal therapy is therefore neurotic since Dr. Janov claims for his approach the final truth about neurotic behavior...Such hyperbole, such evangelic certainty may make us more determined to suspend judgment...The fact is that Dr. Janov asks us not to do what he does throughout the book which is to bring in past terminology, even if, by his approach, this method is to prove the efficacy of his own approach.”

The last part of the quotation makes no sense ("[don't bring in past terminology] even if, by his approach, this method is to prove the efficacy of his own approach"). I don't understand what the hell that means. It appears to imply that Janov's use of past terminology is implied by Janov to prove the efficacy of his approach. But that makes no sense. Of course Janov doesn't claim that his method is to use past terminology to prove the efficacy of primal therapy. Is there some other interpretation of that quotation which seems more plausible to anyone?

Also this part: "to question the ‘truth’ of primal therapy is therefore neurotic since Dr. Janov claims for his approach the final truth about neurotic behavior". The quotation is fallacious. Even though Janov claims the final truth about neurotic behavior, that does not imply that Janov believes that questioning it must be neurotic. Janov does not claim that questioning primal therapy is neurotic.

I suspect the sentences are misquoted, but I don't want to pay to access the article in order to find out.

My concern is this. At present, the beginning of the criticism section has a quotation which is LONG, convoluted, fallacious, and (in parts) unintelligible. I realize the LA Times printed this material (I can't imagine why). But that does not mean we must reproduce it here. I say we replace the quotation with:

"Dr. Janov is an impressive writer and thinker. Certainly, It is worth reading and considering... [However] Dr. Janov claims for his approach the final truth about neurotic behavior...Such hyperbole, such evangelic certainty may make us more determined to suspend judgment..."

That way, the quotation is brief and it makes sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Twerges (talk • contribs) 10:20, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

What about this trimming?:

"Dr. Janov is an impressive writer and thinker. Certainly, It is worth reading and considering,” (a quotation that was used on subsequent covers of some future editions of The Primal Scream), however, he also wrote earlier in the article that: "to question the ‘truth’ of primal therapy is therefore neurotic since Dr. Janov claims for his approach the final truth about neurotic behavior...Such hyperbole, such evangelic certainty may make us more determined to suspend judgment"

The question is that your proposed trimming loses information. IMHO mine only deletes the not-so-clear line. Randroide (talk) 13:06, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Why do you want to keep the sentence: "to question the 'truth' is therefore neurotic..."? I realize it loses information to remove it, but in this case all we lose is a fallacy. The sentence is not a very good one, IMO. If the problem is not enough information then perhaps we could grab another sentence from the source? Twerges (talk) 20:31, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Because I want to preserve a "Source X made statement Y about issue Z" piece of information. Our thinking about the fallaciousness or the unfallaciousness of the statement is totally irrelevant. Why do you think that the sentence is not good?. Randroide (talk) 09:46, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

It is relevant to determine if a statement is fallacious or unimportant. Unless we wish to quote every statement made by this author in its entirety, and every statement made by every author on the subject, then we must select which statements are worth including in the encyclopedia. It is the job of encyclopedia authors to do so. We cannot include every statement of the form "Source X made statement Y," because if we did that, then every wikipedia article would be thousands of pages long.

Encyclopedia authors must select quotations for notability, relevance, terseness, and so on. In fact, by including these statements, we have already selected them, and have omitted the other 900+ words from that essay.

When those statements were selected in the first place, it was a wikipedia editor who selected them. There is nothing sacrosanct about that selection.

The sentence is poor for several reasons: 1) it is clearly fallacious; 2) it is based on a misunderstanding of Janov's views; 3) it does not sum up the author's criticism of primal therapy, but is an ancillary point (at least I hope so). Janov does not claim that people who question the truth of primal therapy are neurotic. Instead, the quote infers that Janov believes that. Must we include every statement about beliefs of what others believe? That seems flighty. I think we should only include statements about what Janov has said.

Since we must select quotations from the article, why don't we select a better one? I think we should select one which best sums up the point of the article. Then, if we still don't have enough information from that source, we can select other sentences which sum up the point of the article.Twerges (talk) 21:22, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Removal of quote

I removed a quote from an author named "Tana Dineen" about junk psychotherapy.

I followed the link and looked at the source, and the quotation was not about primal therapy. Here is the context from the source:

When she was practising psychology in the 1970s, it was fads like primal scream therapy and Gestalt therapy, while today it's regression therapy (which she believes can cause false memories), thought field therapy (TFT), eye movement and desensitization reprocessing therapy (EMDR) and alien abduction therapy.

It is not clear that she was talking about primal therapy when she mentioned "dangerous people". Since calling someone "dangerous" is a serious charge, we must tread carefully and make sure we have the correct referent of the remark before reprinting it in the encyclopedia.

Unfortunately, the linked article contains only brief excerpts from an interview, so it would be difficult to know the wording of the question she was answering.

Furthermore, the article mentions primal therapy exactly once, briefly and in passing, among many other therapies. It seems excessive to have quotations like that. We do not have to include quotations from every personal website that has ever used the term "primal therapy" even once.Twerges (talk) 01:18, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Alice Miller

I think the quote about Alice Miller, weel-known psychologist in the Criticisms section is not pertinent. That is an old point of view that she did express after being disapointed by Stetbacher's Technique. At that time she did learn what she thought was Primal therapy from Stettbacher who's books are more about some kind of self birth feeling therapy.

Also her point of view is more about primal therapist being practiced by dishonnest therapists.

On her own website http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=44&grp=11 you can find an article where she share the opinion of Arthur Janov :

"...Today, I share 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. (cf. his homepage). In addition, I think that it contains (1) a contradiction in itself by reactivating a situation of which one want to get rid of and (2) a perpetuation of the violence directed toward oneself. I don't have any contact with Mister Stettbacher since 1994 when I stopped to recommend his method but I suppose that the information on its negative effects reached him too and that it already motivated him to stop recommending it. Since the release of his book there is a lot of new information on this topic available that are easily accessible thanks to the internet. Maybe, a next book by Stettbacher will bring the necessary corrections to his present work, published 12 years ago...."

Why isn't that quote on the article ?

If no complaint, I will remove the quote from the criticisms section soon.

titinu 6th 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Titinu (talk • contribs) 18:13, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I see your point.

When I re-read Alice Miller's communication to her readers, it appears to be concerned primarily with Stettbacher. It starts out as follows:

"I should like to inform my readers that I no longer, in any way, support or recommend the therapy developed and practised by Mr. J. Konrad Stettbacher. The reasons for this are the following."

However, Miller does state some reservations about primal therapy in general, in the communication to her readers:

"In the meantime a number of years have passed and I now have access to further information that has made me more sceptical about primal therapy as a form of self-help. The quick successes have not always had a lasting effect, and in many cases massive anxieties set in, so strong that clients found it impossible to cope with them without therapeutic support. The danger of an addictive dependency on pain also became more and more clearly apparent."

"There was too much faith in the relief caused by cathartic discharge. But temporary relief of this kind is no substitute for genuine therapy, it is not strong enough to dispel the repeated compulsive urge to act out, be it on the part of patients or therapists. In the many discussions I had with critically-minded primal therapists, at the London Institute and elsewhere..."

"Today I also have a very critical attitude towards the intensive phase and the original primal therapy setting. As it stands, this setting provides unscrupulous therapists with the opportunity not only to sexually exploit their patients with impunity (there being no witnesses), but also to indulge in all kinds of acts of perversion and physical and psychic duress, on the pretext of repeating traumatic birth experiences"

It is not clear that Alice Miller ever completely retracted her recommendation of primal therapy; instead, she retracts her recommendation of Stettbacher and expresses concerns and reservations about primal therapy.

However, I do not think we should remove the reference entirely. I think we should retain something regarding Alice Miller in the criticism section because of her obvious notability. However, the text must be accurate in its summation of her views. We should change the text of that critical citation to accurately reflect her views.

Summarizing Miller's views about primal therapy (either using quotations or summaries) will be difficult because she had views which changed frequently, and her views on the topic appear to be complex.

Perhaps we should say the following:

Alice Miller initially endorsed primal therapy, but ended up having some reservations about it, as follows. She became more cognizant of the dangers of primal therapy when conducted by a therapist who is not properly trained. She felt that there was "too much faith" in cathartic discharge, claiming that the relief was sometimes temporary. She had criticisms about the structure of the initial 3-week intensive phase, claiming that it could provide opportunities for unscrupulous therapists. And .

The above text is just a first stab at it. Feel free to suggest any changes.

Twerges (talk) 22:44, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Your text is still incorrect to my point of view : - please first consider that the article I'm reffering to is on her own website. tha one you quote is not (I did not find it) and is not dated. - she did not initially endorsed primal therapy. She did endorsed stetbacher SELF therapy. A therapy using the mecanical stuff of primal therapy but avoiding the presence of a therapist. She does now say on her website that she agree with Janov on the need to have a therapist and that self Tharepy (primal or other) is dangerous. - any therapy can be dangerous with a therapist who is not properly trained. yu can not blame primal for that. - she says that SOME Primal therapist told her the relief was SOMETIMES temporary. At the same time, she says in her books how the therapy she did on herself changed her life and her work. - About the 3 weeks I could not find the word "criticisms" :It is my opinion that such protection via supervision is of particularly crucial importance in cases where a therapist adopts the setting of classical primal therapy (a setting that a number of therapists have now abandoned) and still insists on working in darkened rooms. The effect of this - particularly during the intensive phase - is to bring about dramatic regressions in the clients and to make them profoundly dependent on the therapist, a state of affairs that can easily be exploited for a variety of purposes. Arthur Janov was sensible of these dangers from the outset, but he was not able to guard his discovery against abuse. This danger is present in any kinf af psychotherapy where a patient is alone with a therapist. It's not specific to primal therapy. - The only thing I would keep is : she warned of the dangers of developing an "addictive dependency" to pain. This is not enought to print her famous name on the critisism section. Add to that, any therapy can create addiction, same as medications.

In the world of "famous" psychologist, she is probably the one to have closer view with Arthur Janov and Primal therapy. Her books saying that therapists have to let patients feels the pain from abused, incest, etc. caused her to be rejected by some esthablished circle of therapists. As for Janov in some ways. They are still too many therapists who do not want to see the pain of their patient.

I'll go ahead and make the change I proposed. If you wish to change the text further then we can go forward from there. Thanks,

Twerges (talk) 03:39, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

New issue regarding Psychological Reports

Recently, someone removed a poll of Psychologists which ranked Primal Therapy near the bottom of credibility. That poll was taken from the journal Psychological Reports.

Initially, I disagreed strongly with the removal and was going to re-instate the citation.

However, upon re-reading it, I thought that the journal Psychological Reports rang a bell, and it reminded me of the notorious journal which had published the work of the notorious weirdo, Dr Cameron, who published "studies" showing that homosexuals pose a threat to society.

Indeed, the journal Psychological Reports is the journal which had published Cameron's work.

The journal is held in extremely low regard. It is notorious for publishing almost any study provided you pay them to publish it (the practice of paying a journal to publish is virtually unknown among reputable journals). It is also notorious for publishing studies which attack people whom its authors find distasteful.

I can easily find quotations of people who refer to Psychological Reports as a "vanity press" or "vanity journal". Also, Psychological Reports was quite famous for publishing Dr Cameron's notorious study, Effect Of Homosexuality Upon Public Health and Social-Order. After which, the APA dropped Dr Cameron from membership, and several prominent Psychologists referred to Dr Cameron as a "disgrace to the profession". A spokesman from the APA said: "We are concerned about Dr. Cameron because we do believe that his methodology is weak," which is a civil way of putting it. Other professional organizations said nasty things about him or dropped him; for example, the American Sociological Association said "Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism". Dr Cameron is notorious enough that there's a substantial wiki page about him: Paul_Cameron. IIRC, Cameron is well-known for writing politically motivated studies, and many professional organizations have distanced themselves from him.

It is likely that Cameron published his weird studies in Psychological Reports because that was one of the very few journals in the world that would accept his studies.

Studies from the journal Psychological Reports are rarely cited by other researchers.

As a result of all this, I am not certain that the journal Psychological Reports would qualify as a reliable source. It may be the only journal I know of that would not qualify as a reliable source. I will have to solicit outside opinions on this matter.Twerges (talk) 22:28, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Interesting, and if you can source your assertions there would be a case for removing facts sourced by Psychological Reports. Could you please source those assertions?. Randroide (talk) 07:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Twerges asked me for an evaluation. Getting some objective data from Journal Citation Reports, the journal is in the social sciences part, in the "Psychology, multidisciplinary" subject category.. It has an impact factor, of 0.353, ranking 78th out of the 102 journals in the section. The highest factor for a non-review journal is 6.97, for American Psychologist -- the median impact factor is 0.766. This does not make it the worst psychology journal in the world--the really poor ones are not even in JCR in the first place, but it does makes it rather insignificant. it means that most articles in it are not cited at all in the first two years after publication. We can analyze further. It is published by Ammos publishing, owned by the editor, not a significant commercial or scientific publisher. It's been cited by a wide scattering of other journals: after itself, most often by PERCEPT MOTOR SKILL a journal of equally low quality from the same publisher, and PERS INDIV DIFFER, a quite respectable journal. The journal is held in over 1000 WorldCat libraries--a very substantial figure considering it costs $440 a year, and has been published for 54 years. It is peer reviewed, though I do not know how stringently. Many good journals charge for publication: even PNAS does, at the very highest level of quality. Now, even a low quality journal can have an occasional good article,for various reasons, such as personal friendship. As an evaluation, I consider it an established scientific journal, near the lower end of the RS peer-review continuum. It states its willingness to publish articles on "speculative" or "alternative" views. It is not of such low quality that material in it can be rejected altogther, nor or such high quality that everything in it can be trusted. If the author of that article is otherwise reputable, and has papers in better journals, the article could in my opinion be used as a source. DGG (talk) 18:06, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

DGG, thanks for the helpful information.

The only reason I raise the issue is because Dr Cameron was known for publishing studies which were politically motivated and gravely flawed; when I asked a knowledgeable person how Cameron's studies could have been accepted for publication, he told me that Cameron was published in Psychological Reports which can be a "vanity journal".

I did a brief search for articles relating to that journal. I found something from the very well-respected Southern Poverty Law Center ([1]):

Not one of Cameron's anti-gay studies has been published in a respected scientific journal with rigorous content review standards. Instead, Cameron props up his façade of credibility by publishing his studies in Psychological Reports, a Montana-based vanity magazine that advertises itself as "The Scientific Manifestation of Free Speech" and will publish practically anything for $27.50 per page.

Here is another thing I found in [2]:

Psychological Reports claims to be a peer-reviewed journal, although editor Doug Ammons adds that “no reviewer has a veto right.” This is in sharp contrast to other, more respected peer-reviewed journals which will refuse to publish an article if serious objections are raised during the peer-review process... Psychological Reports also differs from the other more respectable journals in another very important way: it charges its authors a fee $27.50 per page to publish. That’s why most professionals dismiss Psychological Reports as a “vanity journal,” one that will publish just about anything as long as the author is willing to pay the fee.

And I also found a reference from the UC Davis Psych department which refers to both Dr Cameron and the Psychological Reports journal: [3] .

...I realize that there are other journals which may be lower in the "impact factor" than Psychological Reports. However I'm not sure that those low-impact journals (such as PERCEPT MOTOR SKILL) have quite the same notoriety which Psychological Reports acquired after it repeatedly published the peculiar studies from Dr Cameron who was booted out of the APA (which is rare) after an investigation.

ON the other hand, there are some reasons I have for including the reference, as follows.

With regard to the notability of the authors of the present study. I did a brief pubmed search on both of them. They appear to have contributed many studies to other journals. One of the authors seems to focus on munchausen syndrome etc. A study to which he contributed was found in the New England Journal of Medicine, so I'd have to assume he's well-regarded.

Also, the study in question was a simple poll of Psychologists, and the results were what anyone would have expected.

...I'm not sure about my opinion on this matter. If the journal Psychological Reports publishes studies of varying quality, and these two authors are well-regarded, then I think we should keep the reference. If, however, the journal is notorious in some way, and professionals know to ignore it, then perhaps we should remove the reference. I'm afraid I just don't know.

Perhaps we should keep the reference for the time being. But I'm wondering if you guys think there's someone else I should ask. Isn't there a psychology section where you can post questions about psychology articles generally. Maybe they would have an opinion. Twerges (talk) 06:46, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, publishing a bad article does not make a bad journal. Personally, the tone of the work indicates that the real opposition is to Camron's work, and anyone associated with it, which does not necessarily prove guilt by association for everything else published there. After all PNAS published Pauling's megavitamins and Towns's racism -- but of course they had no choice, for they were members of the Academy and under the rules at the time, which have since been modified, they could publish whatever they pleased. Nature however without that constraint chose to publish anomalous water, and even Duesberg's anti-AIDS paper-- they did it deliberately into order to give exposure to major controversial work.

In this case, since the authors have published work in journals of unquestionable quality, I agree the material can be used. DGG (talk) 02:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

But there are a number of journals that specialise in publishing speculative work, that played a particularly important role before the web made distribution of people's wild ideas so remarkably easy, and which continue today--perhaps the best knows is Perspectives in biology and medicine This has often be cited here, with the understanding that the material is not fully authoritative.

Twerges. Your point about the poll is another good reason to remove it. It's not because Rankroide absolutly want to keep it that we have to obey. A poll made with 139 is laughable. Please someone remove it. I added a comment to your last change about alice miller, you may not have seen it as I wrote it one line above your text. That was a typing mistake. Please read my comment if ever you didn't yet. ====================

Rankroide : about the dico des sectes, I think what I wrote is clear enough. It is misledading the reader by making it looks like an official french dictionnary. As a french citizen, I can tell you there is a big difference of meaning between Dico and Dictionnary. Please don't challenge me on that. My point about the report about sects conducted every year for the french parlement is for me good enough to contest post about this book in wiki. the post is making reader think that Primal Therapy is officially considered as a sect in France. It's desinformation ===================================== About soul & snatcher, it's the same. Some uninformed peoples are writings books without any first hand knowledge. Even if Abgrall is an authority in his job, he is nothing of an authority in discussing primal therapy. If you add every line writen in any book about primal therapy by people who did not have first hand contatc with it. And yes I think that the books from Arthur JAnov, who created primal therapy and did practiced it about 40 years is a more valuable source than books writen by peoples making compilations of random stuff without first hand experience of it.by titinu. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Titinu (talk • contribs) 19:39, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Here is another post I made above :The sentence "The absence of independent peer-reviewed outcome studies (or experimental clinical trials) to substantiate these claims led to the therapy falling out of favor in academic and psychotherapeutic circles." is inacurate. No one can clearly say that it is because of the absence of peer-reviewed studies that caused primal therapy to fall out of favor.... this is the personnal point of view of the writer. In many fields (science, architecture, etc.) some original finding or creations are rejected by the peoples in place, just because they want to keep their place in the establishement. by titinu —Preceding unsigned comment added by Titinu (talk • contribs) 16:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Titinu (talk • contribs)

The post about Jill Gordon is another exemple of peoples speaking about primal therapy having no first hand experience with it. How can we quote on this page someone saying in 2003 "According to Janov the patient frees himself of primal pain by learning the proper way to scream". As many peoples she doesn't know the difference between Janov's primal therapy and Screaming therapy. A mistake that many peoples make. Wikipedia is doing the same mistake by redirecting scream therapy to this page. Scream therapy did really exist in the 70'. Is is a therapy where peoples scream all their soul for no reason. This is not and it has never been primal therapy but many peoples since that time think it is. We have to say here that it isn't. Add to that, Jill Gordon's definition of orthodox is "sometimes something that is successfull". 20:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Titinu (talk • contribs)

From Randroide to tinitu

Hi, Tinitu. My answers:

It is misledading the reader by making it looks like an official french dictionnary. As a french citizen, I can tell you there is a big difference of meaning between Dico and Dictionnary. Please don't challenge me on that.

I do not "challenge" you, tinitu. I ask you about a external link educating us about the meaning of "Dico" in French. Seems that we are missing something about what "dico" means in French.

My less-than-extraordinary French dictionary does not include the term "dico", but translates "dictionary" as "dictionnaire", so I think that yes, you are onto something we ignored.

BTW, here a mild endorsement of the disputed "Dico".

About soul & snatcher, it's the same. Some uninformed peoples are writings books without any first hand knowledge. Even if Abgrall is an authority in his job, he is nothing of an authority in discussing primal therapy

Those references are wikipedia valid sources. "First hand knowledge" is not required to be a proper wikipedia source.

Who says who is an "authority" in Primal Therapy?.

And yes I think that the books from Arthur JAnov, who created primal therapy and did practiced it about 40 years is a more valuable source than books writen by peoples making compilations of random stuff without first hand experience of it

Excuse me, tinitu, but what editors think about sources is irrelevant. What counts is if a source is a proper Wikipedia source or not, and there is a strong case for the disputed sources being proper Wikipedia sources.

The sentence "The absence of independent peer-reviewed outcome studies (or experimental clinical trials) to substantiate these claims led to the therapy falling out of favor in academic and psychotherapeutic circles." is inacurate. No one can clearly say that it is because of the absence of peer-reviewed studies that caused primal therapy to fall out of favor.... this is the personnal point of view of the writer

If the author said that verbatim there´s nothing wrong in quoting him/her, as long as we make clear that it is a third party opinion.

Wikipedia is doing the same mistake by redirecting scream therapy to this page. Scream therapy did really exist in the 70'

If you have sources please illuminate us about the issue creating the new article Scream therapy. I did not know about that therapy.

I think that your knowledge can very useful for the article, I beg you to please be a little patient with the Wikipedia way of doing things. I may look a little cumbersome at first glance, but I assure you there is a reason for why we do things as we do.

Thank you for your attention, tinitu. Randroide (talk) 21:56, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I was the one who started the AfD discussion that resulted in Scream therapy being redirected to Primal therapy. I think that was the right result. It's not a way of saying that Scream therapy and Primal therapy are the same thing, only of directing people interested in the former topic to a related article. I don't think Scream therapy should have its own article, since there were no sources to show that it is a recognized subject. Skoojal (talk) 08:57, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

In the tv serie Frasier, episod "shrink rap" : Niles is having problems with a tenant in his office; the other doctor is a practitioner of primal scream therapy, and encourages his clients to scream at the top of their lungs. In an episode of Australien tv serie Hartley, students are lying on the floor and scream as loud as they can, calling it primal scream. Those are 2 exemples about how in the american culture, primal therapy is by mistake associated with just entering a room, screaming as loud as possible then leave. Some therapists did practice this way but this in nothing of primal therapy.

Jill gordon is using the sentence "According to Janov, the patient must rid herself of Primal Pain which can be eradicated only by learning the Proper Way to Scream" as does the skeptic link. It is such an innacurate description of primal therapy that I can't understand how it can be cited here. Every citation using the term "primal scream therapy" instead of "primal therapy" is the sign that the writer doesn't know what is primal therapy all about. If wiki doesn't adress this issue, it is a real short cut. But when I read Rankroide "Those references are wikipedia valid sources. "First hand knowledge" is not required to be a proper wikipedia source. " I understand how this can happen. People search "primal" in google and paste everything they find ? I don't want to live in a google-wiki culture mindset.

I think about opening soon a new section called "false ideas about primal therapy or commun misconception about primal therapy". Titinu (talk) 09:56, 14 September 2008 (UTC) About the sentence "The absence of independent peer-reviewed outcome studies (or experimental clinical trials) to substantiate these claims led to the therapy falling out of favor in academic and psychotherapeutic circles." please anyone give me the wiki valid source reference to write it. thanks.Titinu (talk) 09:56, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The link "29 Fringe Psychotherapies: The Public at Risk at the Simon Fraser University site" is not working. Please check this, it may have change or remove the post citing it.Titinu (talk) 09:59, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

criticisms

I removed the claim about primal therapy being a "malpsychian nightmare" because the source does not use that term to describe primal therapy. Instead, the source uses that term to describe Synanon, although a description of primal therapy is found in the same section.

From the book:

"If there was any consolation from Maslow's early passing, he was at least spared the rise of therapy cults, and the transformation of the eupsychian dream into a malpsychian nightmare. Synanon, his favorite example..."

...which was followed by two paragraphs devoted exclusively to the abuses of Synanon. After which, there was a paragraph about Synanon's doctrine of the childhood roots of problems, then a paragraph describing primal therapy.

I decided to replace the term which probably was referring to Synanon, with a criticism specific to primal therapy. Twerges (talk) 02:38, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

It is a more specific criticism. Good job, Twerges. Randroide (talk) 08:57, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Added word "notorious"

I realize that the word "cult" has been removed from the description of the CFT. However, I re-added the word notorious. Whatever else may be said about it, the CFT was definitely notorious. It was the cause of the largest psychology malpractice suit in California which resulted in many other lawsuits, which caused all of the senior therapists (save one) to be banned from ever practicing again.

I think it's important that the CFT not be described right away as just another "psychotherapy group" since that omits the reason for its importance.Twerges (talk) 20:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I doubt that a group should be called "notorious" unless there's a source specifically using that term to describe it; however, I don't feel strongly enough about this to revert you immediately. Skoojal (talk) 21:36, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

After a little more thought, I've removed this from both articles. It looks silly, and it certainly isn't needed. Skoojal (talk) 07:46, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

It's important that the article not describe the CFT as just another psychotherapy group, which it was not. It's important that the introduction to that article provide a synopsis of the rest of the article, which it will not if we remove any mention from the introduction that the CFT was notorious.

We have already removed the word "cult" from the introduction, even though every major source used that term exactly in describing the CFT. And now we have removed any other terminology which suggests that anything untoward happened there at all, from the opening sentences. Instead, the opening sentences now include only banal information, like the year of its founding and the number of members. As a result, there is now only one sentence in the entire introduction which even suggests that anything unusual happened there; and that sentence is weakly worded, vague, tacked on to the end of the paragraph, brief, and seemingly a minor diversion.

Much of the most important terminology has been removed from the introduction. If anything, we should keep the "notorious" bit and get rid of all the other trivial stuff. Even if the introduction read: "The center for feeling therapy was a notorious psychotherapy cult which spun off from Primal Therapy", it would include much more important information than it does now.

"it certainly isn't needed."

Yikes! The fact that the CFT was notorious, is the only reason an article about it is found in wikipedia in the first place. It's precisely what's needed.

If the CFT were just a "psychotherapy group" from the 1970s, with nothing unusual, then there would be no purpose to even having an article. I don't follow you at all on this matter. Why is it not needed? What is more important about the CFT than the abusive things they did? Their location?

Also, how does the word "notorious" look silly? I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean the spelling?Twerges (talk) 11:17, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Do you have a source saying that the CFT was notorious? If not, I can't see how this belongs in either article. And frankly, I don't see how a rather obscure group like this could count as "notorious" at all. A term like that should really apply only to a group that was well known. That's one of the things that's silly about it. Skoojal (talk) 22:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The CFT was not obscure. It was a group which was famous for being destructive and incredibly abusive to its members. It caused the largest psychology malpractice suit in California, which dragged on for years and generated considerable news coverage. Every single source says that.

If you think that the word notorious is not the best word to describe that, then replace it with a more precise word. But do not just remove from the introduction all mention that anything negative happened there. By doing so you will create an introduction which is inaccurate.

Let me provide an analogy. Suppose I wrote an introduction for an article about the Nazi party, as follows: "The Nazi party was a political party. It was founded in Germany in 1932, and it disbanded in 1945. At its peak, it had hundreds of thousands of members. It was famous for its uniforms and symbols, and for its art collection. It rescued the economy of Germany and restored the industrial base there. It was also famous for its promotion of engineering, and for its encouragement of technological development. Also, over time, some bad things happened." And then the introduction ends there.

Of course, the Nazi party was incomparably worse than the CFT. Nevertheless, the CFT severely abused its members, by humiliating them, dominating them, degrading them, stealing their money, requiring them to get abortions, sexually humiliating them, subjecting them to severe physical labor for long hours, and on and on. Do you think that's accurately described by calling it a "psychotherapy group" with no other qualifiers?

I'm going to add prose to the introductions of both articles which details the abuses of the CFT.Twerges (talk) 06:43, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

We have already removed the word "cult" from the introduction, even though every major source used that term exactly in describing the CFT.

If that´s the case (I am ignorant about the pertinent bibliography), it is obvious that we should certainly say that the CFT was named as a "cult" by sources x, y and z.Randroide (talk) 12:58, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Original research?

Patients who did not finish the therapy were excluded. (See Duration above.) This may have biased the sample in the favor of patients who strongly believed in primal therapy. Patients in the sample had been in therapy for between 15 and 32 months. Videgård himself went through the therapy, which may indicate a possible bias in favor of primal therapy. The evaluation was based on patients' answers to questions and some projective tests that require interpretation by the tester (Videgård himself) so there was a potential for bias. Also there was no control group to make comparsions against spontaneous remission, maturation, and placebo effects. There also seems to have been no controls on other variables that have been shown to help mental health such as nutrition, medication, exercise and non-primal therapy techniques.

The phrases I have put in bold type are the ones that really stick out, but the whole paragraph seems quite opinionated and one-sided to me. I am not sure what is meant by "projective tests that require interpretation", but perhaps someone who knows more about it could go into more detail here so the reader can make up their own mind if there was room for bias in the tests. The section basically reads like a list of reasons to discredit Videgard's findings, not an objective summary of the study. Omgplz (talk) 15:57, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The term "projective tests" usually refers to things like the Rorscharch and the Thematic Apperception Test. Those tests involve things like asking a person to interpret ambiguous scenarios from pictures. The tests are based on the presumption that people with mental problems will "project" their troubles into ambiguous situations.

In this case, I agree with all of the statements regarding bias, etc, which you pointed out. Nevertheless, I have removed them, because they are the opinions of a former wikipedia editor and so are not appropriate here, even if I agree with them. I had previously thought that several of those statements should be coalesced into one sentence regarding the author's biases. But now that I consider it, the statements clearly aren't appropriate here at all. Unless some published RS can be found which makes statements like that, they aren't acceptable.

Twerges (talk) 20:03, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Criticism section of this article is absurd and should be deleted

It's useless and excessive to present readers with quote after quote after quote about how bad primal therapy is. The idea of over-kill applies here. Plus, it's bad writing, of course. Just summarize the main points and integrate them into the rest of the article. Skoojal (talk) 06:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Skoojal, I agree that the format of the criticism section is unfortunate. I have always believed that this idea of a collection of quotations was unfortunate.

The format also violates wikipedia guidelines regarding excessive quotation. Also, various other neutral editors (jakew, dgg), showed up and expressed their displeasure with the quotation format. Also, no other scholarly documents have excessive quotations from minor websites, and no scholarly sources have a quotation for each citation or for most citations.

I believe the format should look like any other professional encyclopedia or scholarly document. In other words, it should look something like this:

Primal therapy is not accepted by most Psychologists [1][2][3]. It does not have substantial scientific evidence to support its efficacy [5][6][7][8]. Some sources claim that the memories it claims to uncover of early trauma, cannot be recalled because the child's brain was not sufficiently developed to retain memories of that sort [9][10]...

And so on.

However, I am not opposed to having a separate "criticism" section, since I don't see how the criticisms could be integrated into the rest of the article elegantly.

If we wish to retain all those negative quotations about primal therapy, then I suggest we split that material off into another section or article called "Collection of negative quotations about primal therapy."Twerges (talk) 20:54, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Twerges. Although the formatting of the criticism section needs improvement (and I have already largely worked on this), it's extremely important information for an objective presentation of the subject to show exactly what the opinion of the scientific community is, and just how little therapeutic merit is ascribed to this practice by a wide range of experts. Reinderien^{talk/contribs} 00:26, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Reinderien, the idea of changing criticism in the way you suggest has received support from you, DGG, jakew, myself, and others. It seems you have consensus to make the changes you've worked on. I think you can just go ahead and make those changes.

If there are any disagreements over your specific wording then we can discuss that after you've made the changes.Twerges (talk) 02:06, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the proposed changes which were agreed upon during discussion.

I moved all the quotations to a separate page. That page is devoted to critical quotations about primal therapy.

Feel free to add more critical material or critical references. Please add critical references in the standard wikipedia reference format, and not in the unusual format of having one long excerpt for each reference.Twerges (talk) 22:19, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Deleted?. Did you fail to see that it is SOURCED infomation?

If the presentation is under dispute, change the presentation but -for G*ds sake- do not delete sourced info.

I did just that, I changed the presentation to the format is used in the article to quote extensively to Janov.

If there is any reason to quote extensively to what Janov said about his therapy but NOT to equally quote criticisms made by others, please let me know.

The split of the "Criticisms" section is a gigantic POV Forking

If you do not like my presentation please improve it, but please do not delete sourced info. Randroide (talk) 07:46, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

---

Randroide, it is NOT POV pushing to cite sources in the standard way. See [here].

The vast majority of the removed quotations say the same thing, over and over again. It's redundant and unnecessary. That is why we have a standard citation format, in which there is a claim (stated once) followed by several references to support that claim. Doing so is NOT POV pushing, it's what they do in every single encyclopedia, journal article, academic paper, academic book, etc.

This issue was discussed extensively on the talk page and agreed to by consensus (see above) before I made the edit. It was agreed to after neutral editors showed up to this page and suggested that the "comment format" was inappropriate and excessive.

During the discussion of this issue, I proposed the exact format that the new criticism section would take:

Primal therapy is not accepted by most Psychologists [1][2][3]. It does not have substantial scientific evidence to support its efficacy [5][6][7][8]. Some sources claim that the memories it claims to uncover of early trauma, cannot be recalled because the child's brain was not sufficiently developed to retain memories of that sort [9][10]

That new format is the same as almost any other encyclopedia, academic paper, journal article, etc. It is the standard format.

If there is any reason to quote extensively to what Janov said about his therapy but NOT to equally quote criticisms made by others, please let me know.

Janov is not quoted extensively throughout the article, nor should he be. You will notice that extensive and excessive quotations of Janov from his books, have been removed, from this and other articles. Any quotations from Janov which are not essential to describing the basic point of primal therapy, should be removed.

Also, it might be best if you contribute to the discussion beforehand, while consensus is being achieved, instead of waiting until afterward and then suddenly pressing "undo" with an exaggerated response ("for G*ds sake..." etc).

I'll seek outside consensus on this matter.Twerges (talk) 08:11, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

---

Hi, Twerges. This is Randroide.

'Randroide, it is NOT POV pushing to cite sources in the standard way. See [here].

I never said it was. I simply said that to quote Janov´s critics is as legitimate as to quote Janov.

The vast majority of the removed quotations say the same thing, over and over again. It's redundant and unnecessary.

It is not, IF the authorities uttering the same criticism are different. It does not have the same weight to have a criticism uttered by one source than by ten sources.

It was agreed to after neutral editors showed up...

Neutral editors?. Who are the Non-Neutral editors?.

That new format is the same as almost any other encyclopedia, academic paper, journal article, etc. It is the standard format.

...a format that the rest of the article does NOT follow quoting to Janov profusely.

Janov is not quoted extensively throughout the article, nor should he be. You will notice that extensive and excessive quotations of Janov from his books, have been removed, from this and other articles.

Really?. Are you sure?.

Please let me paste you the ALL the complete sentences that quote Janov in the disputed article (and in the Arthur Janov article):

"Our first needs are solely physical ones for nourishment, safety and comfort. Later we have emotional needs for affection, understanding and respect for our feelings. Finally, intellectual needs to know and to understand emerge."[2] "Need is a total state of the human being - and at birth we are almost nothing but need." "Primal Pain is deprivation or injury which threatens the developing child. A parent's warning is not necessarily a Primal Pain for the child. Utter humiliation is...An infant left to cry it out in the crib is in Pain...It is not hurt as such which defines Primal Pain but rather the context of the hurt or its meaning to the impressionable developing consciousness of the child."'There is no way to go deep without first going shallow.'"Although there are scientific references and citations throughout this work, we should not lose track of the overarching truth--feelings are their own validation. We can quote and cite all day long, but the truth ultimately lies in the experience of human beings. Their feelings explain so much that statistical evidence is irrelevant." Primal Therapy is not just making people scream. It was the title of a book. It was never 'Primal Scream Therapy'. Those who read the book knew that the scream is what some people do when they hurt. Others simply sob or cry. It was the hurt we were after, not mechanical exercises such as pounding walls and yelling 'mama'."

Total of 15 lines for Janov (in my screen and brownser)

And now, the ALL the complete sentences quoting Janov´s critics:

"Dr. Janov is an impressive writer and thinker. Certainly, It is worth reading and considering,” "to question the ‘truth’ of primal therapy is therefore neurotic since Dr. Janov claims for his approach the final truth about neurotic behavior...Such hyperbole, such evangelic certainty may make us more determined to suspend judgment.” "The elements are all pretty traditional: isolation, deprivation, anticipation, and suggestion. You can teach people a lot of different things that way. Brainwashing and the vision-quest both use it." "It does appear that the need to cling to a simple, unqualified, dogmatic theory outweighs whatever critical awareness that Janov's readers possess." "Two years after writing his first book, Janov's certitude about having the one cure-all was established-at least in his mind"... "Catharsis theory in all its forms has been challenged repeatedly over the years. Evidence that expressing angry, violent behaviour does not drain it away but increases the chances of its recurrence has been presented in the scientific psychology literature for years "."what Frank describes as healing cults more closely resembles what I think occurs in Primal Therapy than does Janov's description"."primal therapy, which was invented by Arthur Janov, has been all but abandoned, especially due to a lack of evidence that it actually works.""Since there is no relevant research, Primal Therapy could simply be chalked up as a placebo and the excessive demand characteristics of the extreme rituals and procedures as well as group pressures." "Truth be known, primal therapy cannot be defended on scientifically established principles. This is not surprising considering its questionable theoretical rationale." "Rebirthing, Primal Scream Therapy, and Dianetics (Scientology) all assert that people can and should recall times in their lives when their brains and cognitive processes were too immature to lay down memories of the sort posited by these theorists" "where...are the cadres of permanently cleared ex-primallers who live their lives without struggle..." "...while undeniably an inventive and intriguing approach to psychotherapy, it lacks the underpinning of scientific validation which potential clients ought to be able to expect at this point in our history." "Timothy Moore, chairman of the department of psychology at York University's Glendon College in Toronto, points out that Janov's ascertains of scientific linkage are based on uncontrolled case histories and personal observations, and as such his work has not been scientifically validated."

Total of 28 lines for Janov´s critics.

Now please explain us why Janov has a "right" for 15 lines of literal quotes and his critics (grosso modo ALL the non-Janovian psychologists) have no "right" to have their criticisms quoted.

Also, it might be best if you contribute to the discussion beforehand, while consensus is being achieved, instead of waiting until afterward and then suddenly pressing "undo" with an exaggerated response ("for G*ds sake..." etc).

Yes, yes. You are totally right on this point. I failed to notice the discussion and I was simply horrified when I saw what was going on with the sourced section. Mea culpa. I beg your pardon. Randroide (talk) 13:12, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

---

From twerges to Randroide

You said:

It is not, IF the authorities uttering the same criticism are different. It does not have the same weight to have a criticism uttered by one source than by ten sources.

True, it does not have the same weight to quote from one source as from ten. However, we can easily indicate that a point was said by ten sources, by citing all ten: "Primal Therapy lacks scientific validation...[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]". That way, we retain the weight of ten sources, without a redundant bullet-point quotation for each.

"Janov is not excessively quoted." Really?. Are you sure?. Total of 15 lines for Janov (in my screen and brownser). Total of 28 lines for Janov´s critics.

I feel that I might have failed to convey my main point. My main point is not about quotation, it is about concision.

At present, the material in the criticism section flagrantly violates concision. It violates concision to excessively quote from every source, no matter how minor. It violates concision to repeat the same essential quotation 6 times over. It violates concision to place each redundant quotation on its own bullet point. It violates concision to repeat the author name and publication details in the text, in addition to the references. To say nothing of how ridiculous it all is. It belabors the point in a way which is absurd!

We don't do any of that stuff for Janov's quotations. All of Janov's quotations are necessary to explaining some crucial, basic point of what primal therapy is about. If we removed any of them, we would have to replace the removed quotation with prose which explains the same thing, so no concision would be gained.

As an example, suppose we had material which looked like this, in the article:

• Arthur Janov, in his book, "The Primal Scream", 1970, [citation which repeats publication details, etc]:

"We must scream in order to get well."

• Arthur Janov's friend, Al Smith, wrote in his book, "Primal Therapy Revisited", 1971, Harcourt Brace Publications, [citation with redundant info]:

"We really need to scream in order to get well."

• Arthur Janov's associate, Fred Thompson, in his book, "Birth Trauma", 1972, Abacus Books, [citation with redundant info] says:

"You really, really must scream if you want to get well!"

• Arthur Janov, in his book...

...etc etc, ten times over. (I say "etc" because I don't wish to spell it all out, even here, in discussion, where standards are much looser).

If such material were found in the article, I would favor replacing the bullet points with one sentence: "Janov and associates have repeatedly claimed that we must scream in order to get well [1][2][3][4]..." which would convey the same information.

It is not necessary to belabor the point in the way that we do! The reader is not an idiot. He will figure out that 10 references means 10 sources said that. He can click on the reference link if he wants to know who the author is. He does not need to read the same thing 5 times in a row, on separate bullet points, to find out that primal therapy is not accepted by mainstream Psychology. Twerges (talk) 23:24, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Critical quotations

Well, it appears that the separate page for critical quotations will be deleted. As a result, I've re-added the quotations to this page (in a separate section) until there's some consensus about what to do with them.Twerges (talk) 06:53, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

It is in my opinion reasonable in each case to use carefully selected quotations. From Janov, to show the range of the book and the nature of the contents. From positive and negative criticism, usually an approximately equal number of the most salient one, from the best authorities.,though when multidisciplinary work is involved, they different fields should be represented. If it should happen that for one side one has to scrape through to usually borderline sources to get three or four, while from the other the three or four are from very eminent people in unquestionably RSs, the reader can safely be left to draw the sensible conclusion. I point out that, rhetorically, to overquote in attacking something implies that one is trying to rely on the mere weight, not quality, of opinion--such methods usually indicate to me a degree of bias in the presentation and I discount such quotefarms & the effect can be counterproductive. DGG (talk) 04:34, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for reinserting the quotes, Twerges. Some trimming of the quotes critizising Janov would be right, but trying to do not loose essential information. Quotes by Janov are right as they are, IMO.

For instance, I suggest to go from this:

• In a Discover magazine article, May 2007, science writer Steve Ornes wrote: "Timothy Moore, chairman of the department of psychology at York University's Glendon College in Toronto, points out that Janov's ascertains of scientific linkage are based on uncontrolled case histories and personal observations, and as such his work has not been scientifically validated." article

To this:

• In a Discover magazine article, the chairman of a department of psychology is quoted saying: "Janov's ascertains of scientific linkage are based on uncontrolled case histories and personal observations, and as such his work has not been scientifically validated" article

Or from this:

• In a 1982 paper Primal therapy - a clinically confirmed procedure? published in Zeitschrift für Psychosomatische Medizin und Psychoanalyse, Ehebald and Werthmann report that, following a review of the scientific literature, they found "no on-going reports of primal therapy's therapeutic results, no statistical studies and no follow-up studies". Concluding that primal therapy is not a valid therapeutic technique, they stated that most psychotherapists in the Federal Republic of Germany do not use the techniques, believe it to be based upon questionable theory and dangerous in practice.

To this:

• In a 1982 paper Primal therapy - a clinically confirmed procedure? published in a german publication, the authors stated that they found "no on-going reports of primal therapy's therapeutic results, no statistical studies and no follow-up studies", concluding that primal therapy is not a valid therapeutic technique, believing it to be based upon questionable theory and being dangerous in practice.

Another option is to "desquotesize" (ugh, what a word) the Criticism section under the format "Source A uttered criticism X,Y and Z" Randroide (talk) 13:18, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

In this sort of quote list, the name of the journal is critical and must appear at least in the link. otherwise there is no telling whether its worth noticing. "a German publication" is a meaningless phrase by comparison. Ditto about the author and the affiliation. Without this, the section amounts to: "these things have been said in various places", and we might as well just have a reference to the Google search. It can be appropriate to have a quote from a popular unauthoritative magazine like Discover, but its necessary to make clear where its coming from. Further the quotes shouldbe meraningful. The point aboutthe quote from ZPMP is that "most psychotherapists in the FRG don't use..." Opinion, even sourced opinion, is worthless unless its either authoritative or representative, not picked and chosen for effect. DGG (talk) 04:13, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Regarding authoritativeness: Arthur Janov is just a psychologist saying this and that about his own therapy. That´s just the level of authoritativeness needed for the "Criticism" section. It would be very hard to argue "The Primal Scream" being one iota more authoritative than a "Discover" article.

AFAIK in both cases you have a Ph.D. writing a text and being supervised by (at least) an editor. Please point to me if I am missing something on this subject.

Regarding this line from Twerges: "It violates concision to excessively quote from every source, no matter how minor". like Karl Popper and H. J. Eysenck, because Primal Therapy has never been as influential as Psychoanalysis.

To sum up: Asking for major sources for a minor subject (as Primal Therapy) is -IMHO- to miss the perspective.

Twerges also wrote: "It is not necessary to belabor the point in the way that we do!". I beg to differ. It is not the same a criticism written in the 1970s than a criticism written in 2007 (Primal Therapy has been evolving with time, as Janov´s claims). It is not the same genre of criticism the experiences of Alice Miller, an article by Martin Gardner or a meta review of published data in a German Psychology journal. IMHO just resuming all those criticisms in the main text is adding apples to oranges.

I took the liberty of improving (I hope) the disputed section according to some ideas that were expressed here.

• I deleted the bullet points.

• I trimmed down non essential segments of the quotations.

• I tried to transfer content from the quotes to the text (Please review my text because I am not a native English speaker).

• I added "ref" tags to remove the fastidious citation of sources within the main text.

• I added some Wikipedia links.

Please review my work. I am sure there must be improvements to be made. Randroide (talk) 10:48, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

• Quotations belong in Wikiquote. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 17:37, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Randroide,

Although I agree with your addition of proper references, I believe that the publication details should be moved to references and not just copied there, because it is redundant.

Excuse me, Twerges, but Primal Therapy is a minor therapy, and therefore most of the criticisms had been uttered by minor sources. This is not Psychoanalysis#Criticism where you can enjoy the luxury of citing criticisms uttered by major authors

That's not correct. There are criticisms from Lalich, Alice Miller, Martin Gardner, a federal court of Germany, a survey of hundreds of Psychologists, etc. Those sources are far more significant than print-on-demand books and personal webpages.

Even though primal therapy is minor, there are still critical sources which are comparatively important.

Randroide, it appears that we shall never agree about this. However, it appears to me that consensus favors trimming down quotations significantly. DGG wrote that we should have some quotations but "to overquote in attacking something implies that one is trying to rely on the mere weight" and that we should have an equal number of pro- and anti-primal therapy quotations, which we do not. One user with an IP address feels that all the quotations should just be removed. I favor removing redundant material but not getting rid of all quotations. Will Beback claims that quotations do not belong here. As a result, the consensus seems to be against you. Since there is no way we will convince each other, at this point if you still feel that all that material should be present in the article then you'll have to try to generate consensus in favor of it.

I trimmed down the critical quotations, according to consensus. I removed quotations which are purely redundant, where an earlier quotation from a similar source says substantially the same thing. I also removed a quotation from Lets talk about me which appears to be taken at random from that book and does not sum up the book's criticism of primal therapy but rather talks about Janov's readers.Twerges (talk) 21:07, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

• On further review, I see that some of the entries weren't quotations, but rather summaries of relevant material from reliable sources. For example:
  • The book Le Dico des sectes (which means "Dictionary of Sects" Edited by Annick Drogou, Toulouse, France: Editions Milan, 1998) lists Janov's primal therapy as a sect [4].
  • In 1996, Starker and Pankratz published in Psychological reports a study of 300 randomly-sampled psychologists. Participants were asked for their views about the soundness of methods of mental health treatment. Primal therapy was identified as one of the approaches "most in question as to soundness".
• Rather than present one quote or citation after another, it would be more helpful for the readers if we could summarize these in a logical manner. And we shouldn't approach it as a summary of "criticism", but rather a summary of significant viewpoints, regardless of whether they are good, bad, or indifferent. So for example, we might have a paragraph on that would summarize the study and the quotes about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the therapy. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:51, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
• (PS: I copied a chunk of the quotations to q:Primal therapy. That page needs to be reformatted, the non-quotes removed, and a better balance of quotations added. Feel free!) ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:55, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Good initiative the Wikiquote paga, Will Beback.

Twerges, could you please present your reasons for this edit [5]. You deleted five sourced critical statements about Primal Therapy. Why?. You must have a good reason to do that.

"Consensus" to delete relevant sourced information is consensus against what I know as "the rules" here, at Wikipedia Randroide (talk) 16:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

---

Randroide,

You deleted five sourced critical statements about Primal Therapy. Why? You must have a good reason to do that.

Didn't you read the arguments above? I have stated my reasons extensively and repeatedly. I don't know what else I could say.

"Consensus" to delete relevant sourced information is consensus against what I know as "the rules" here, at Wikipedia

I have looked over the core policies of wikipedia, quite carefully. I do not find anything within them that requires us to repeat the same points, over and over, or to include long lists of utterly redundant quotations. If there is some policy which requires that, or which you feel is relevant to this issue and has not been considered, then feel free to present that policy here.

You must have a good reason to do that

I do have good reasons, which I have presented above. I have repeated my reasons several times. I don't see how they could have been missed.

It's hard to believe you're being serious when you say that there's "no such thing as excessive detail". Draw that argument out to it's logical conclusion. What if I quoted 100 pages verbatim from Janov's books? What if I quoted the entirety of all published criticisms (copyright issues aside)? Is there really no such thing as excessive detail?

Here is an excerpt from WP:Notability:

However, because of the nature of an encyclopedia, the concept of notability nonetheless affects article content. Treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance. Keep in mind that an encyclopedia article is a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject, not a complete exposition of all possible details. (my emphasis)

Extensively quoting from extremely minor sources is giving them undue weight.

The only policy I can find which supports your point of view is WP:Preserve, which says: "Whatever you do, endeavour to preserve information...instead of removing, try to rephrase..." However, even that policy contains explicit exceptions: "Exceptions include: duplication or redundancy, irrelevancy, inaccuracy..." But the quotations I removed were clearly redundant, irrelevant, or inaccurate.

With regard to your other claim:

[From you:] Excuse me, Twerges, but Primal Therapy is a minor therapy, and therefore most of the criticisms had been uttered by minor sources. This is not Psychoanalysis#Criticism where you can enjoy the luxury of citing criticisms uttered by major authors

Incorrect. Primal therapy is clearly not accepted now (neither is Psychoanalysis) but it was quite major. In fact, in 1971, there was a primal therapy craze sweeping the country. During that time, Janov sold millions of copies and was a repeated guest on Johnny Carson and elsewhere, and his books had full-page ads in the NY Times. At one point, primal therapy was important enough to be included in college textbooks, and John Lennon (of "the Beetles") wrote an album about it that sold hundreds of millions of copies. And there are critical essays about it from Martin Gardner, Singer, Clare, Lalich, Alice Miller, and other major authors. So we obviously can "enjoy the luxury of citing criticisms uttered by major authors".Twerges (talk) 22:59, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Removed "Dico de sectes" citation

I removed the citation of "Le Dico des Sectes" which claims that Primal Therapy is a cult.

I did a little research, and discovered that "Le Dico" has entries for the following, in addition to primal therapy:

agnosticism, atheism, fundamentalism, heresy, schism ... anthropology, apparition, Bible, Brahmanism, confession, contemplation ... Internet, jargon, meditation ... vegetarianism ... depersonalization, depression, ... fetishism ...

It's not clear that the dictionary lists cults only. It appears the dictionary lists everything which the author thinks is related to cults somehow. It is a dictionary of terms useful in discussing cults. As a result, the presence of primal therapy in that dictionary may only imply that primal therapy is related to cults, that cults have spun off from it, or borrowed techniques from it (3-week intensive, etc).

It is important that we use the term "cult" carefully. Unless the source says "primal therapy is a cult" quite directly, or contains primal therapy in a list of nothing but cults, then we cannot use the term "cult" to describe it.Twerges (talk) 21:19, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Reasonable. That´s and argument. Congratulations for your good job regarding this issue, Twerges. Randroide (talk) 17:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Excessive detail for Tomas Videgård's study

I think we should trim down the section on Thomas Videgard's The success and failure of primal therapy. This book is a swedish grad student's PhD thesis. It seems excessive to me to have so much material from it. I think we should remove several things: individual bullet points for his categories of results, the date of entry of the subjects, etc. Twerges (talk) 21:25, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I think we sould not. Videgård´s book is the only "on the ground" independent evaluation of the efficacy of Primal Therapy. I deleted the bullet points and the months the patients entered therapy as you suggested, as well as the overkilling explaining there was no control group. Please check my edits [6][7][8]. Frankly I fail to see a reason to remove anything else, but I am open if you want to present your reasons. Randroide (talk) 16:28, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

That's all I wanted. It seems fine to me now.Twerges (talk) 23:00, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Removal of three more references

I noticed that someone removed 3 more references from the criticisms.

I agree with the removal of the "fringe psychotherapy" paper, because the entire paper does not mention primal therapy even once. Instead it contains the term "primal pain," exactly once, in a sentence which also mentions many other therapies. I do not think we should refer to any source which does not mention primal therapy in any significant way or does not even devote one full sentence to primal therapy.

The other two critical references (New Age Blues and Let's talk about me) should be re-added with different quotations or with summaries, IMO.

The first reference ("New Age Blues") has a substantive criticism of primal therapy which is reprinted in full on the web, here. That source contains several full pages about primal therapy, which is a lot, relative to this topic.

The second reference (Let's talk about me) is an important book written by a very notable author who devoted significant space to primal therapy. For that reason, I feel we should re-add this reference, and should either gather a different quotation from it or should provide a summary. Although I deleted the quotation, the only reason I deleted it, was because it was just a pot shot against the kind of people who read Janov's books; that kind of silly, irrelevant insult is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. However we could easily find another quotation or could summarize his views on the subject (the subject being primal therapy, not readers). I'll try to produce another quotation or a summary of this reference.Twerges (talk) 06:41, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I made a few changes to the criticism section, including re-adding the Clare reference (with substantial info this time), and removing a duplicate reference. I think the criticism section is fine now, IMHO.Twerges (talk) 07:31, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

What we do with this new source?

[9]

It is a cultural interpretation of PT.

Do we use the source at "Criticisms"?. Do we create a "Cultural impact" or "History of PT" new section?.

Quotes from the source:

Neither 'Arthur Janov' nor 'Primal Therapy' are represented on the website of the magazine Psychology Today. This absence from a huge online source is neatly symbolic of the therapy’s broader contemporary obscurity...Given that Janov’s critics do not dispute his impressive sales for The Primal Scream...that one of the most famous people of the twentieth century went through this therapy (dedicating an LP to it), and a song inspired by Janov's writings has been both number three and number one in the British charts, this obscurity is puzzling. Primal Therapy initially enjoyed a success almost as dramatic as the cure it claimed to effect...Primal Therapy became for millions of people a cultural reference point, a subject of discussion at parties, and in some cases a personal practice. The therapy lost momentum as the 1970s went on, fading into almost complete cultural insignificance in the following decades...Since the mid-1980s Janov's work has sunk from public view

It must be said in the article that PT was much more culturally influential in the 1970s than what it is now. IMO this article is the ideal source for that assertion.

I miss a "History of Primal Therapy" section detailing the differences of current and past "Primal Therapies", the French Janov operation in the 1980s, the former Janov´s wife split... this article could be a good starting point for that section

Ideas, please. Randroide (talk) 17:59, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I like your idea of a "history of primal therapy" section. We could include: its notability in the 1970s, Janov's split with his wife, the split into two centers, Janov's relocation to France and his subsequent relocation back to Los Angeles, the opening of the New York clinic, the decline in cultural influence, the splinter group that founded a primal therapy center in Denver, the present obscurity of PT, and so on.

Primal Therapy was hugely influential during the early 1970s. During that time, there were more than 15 splinter "primal therapy" centers operating in the San Francisco Bay area alone, and I know there were many more in the New York area. At that time, Janov made regular appearances on The Tonight Show and so on, and his books had full-page ads in the NY times and elsewhere. And PT was mentioned in college textbooks.

In fact, PT is notable primarily for historical reasons. So it's a serious omission that the article does not include these facts.

It must be said in the article that PT was much more culturally influential in the 1970s than what it is now

Absolutely. That fact is so important, that I think we should even mention it in the introduction, in addition to the history section.Twerges (talk) 21:07, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

POV tag

This article is a pretty disgraceful hit piece, especially the criticism section, so I've placed a POV tag on the page until I get the chance to try and clean some of it up. Some of the more egregious misrepresentations of source I have already removed, but the crit section reads mostly like a grab-bag of google hits that have something nasty to say about the therapy, regardless of reliability of source or context, while positive endorsements are conspicuous by their absence.

I will try to do some more cleaning up over the next day or two. Gatoclass (talk) 16:35, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Gatoclass, could you please tell us Why you removed the section about Center for Feeling Therapy without at least providing a link at the "see also" section?.

Could you please tell us Why you just deleted sources?. If (as you wrote) "statement not supported by sources" I think that you should suggest an alternative wording.

Could you please comment this "whom?" tagging [10]. The statement is sourced, so I see no purpose for the tag.

Please note that the reliability of the "crit" sources must be on par with the reliability of the "Primal" sources, i.e., more or less Janov´s say so.Randroide (talk) 17:41, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I have already responded to most of these concerns in my reply to Twerges below. Re your comment about leaving a link in the "See Also" section, I am still not persuaded that even that much is justified but I'm not going to contest it at the moment. I think there are probably a number of links that could be added to this article, that's one of the things that will require more consideration. Gatoclass (talk) 07:01, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Gatoclass,

I hope that you do add some positive references to the article, since there are none at present. It would definitely be appropriate to have some positive things in addition to the criticism section.

However, I don't agree entirely with your other edits.

I don't see the need for the "by whom" tag since the statement preceding it is sourced, so it's clear who said it.

I don't agree with the removal of the statement from the introduction. I agree that the statement was poorly worded, and should have been re-phrased. In fact, the entire paragraph reads very poorly. But I think we should have significant material in the introduction which states that primal therapy is not accepted by mainstream psychology.

I'm not sure that the section on the center for feeling therapy should be removed. I can see your point on this. But the reasons for its relevance are spelled out: it was founded by defectors from Janov's institute, including one who wrote a paper reprinted in the appendix of Janov's second book, and it was intially devoted to doing primal therapy before going off in other directions. Thus, the relevance seems clear enough to me.Twerges (talk) 21:35, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

It's not relevant because they were not trained primal therapists. They were basically booted out by Janov halfway through their training. Having a section devoted to these two would be a bit like having a section on the antics of a couple of unqualified surgeons in the surgery article. But even if they had been qualified primal therapists, which they weren't, it would still be a massive case of wp:undue to have a section on them, like having a section on a couple of psychoanalysts convicted of malpractice in the middle of the psychoanalysis article.

Re your other comments - I removed the statement from the intro because it was (a) inaccurate (b) an apparent misrepresentation of the source, and (c) because one finding in a single study wouldn't belong in the intro anyway. Your characterization of PT as "not accepted" is also an exaggeration. One has to be careful in one's choice of words. PT is still practised by some psychiatrists and psychotherapists, it's just not a particularly popular form of therapy.

I added the "by whom" tag because again, a blanket statement is being extracted from a single study. Wiki policy requires that statements be attributed to someone, they cannot be referenced as if they were self-evident facts. The statement in question is a generalization whose effect is to mislead the reader. I don't have access to the article in question, but "x said y" is the usual format for statements of this type, and really, more detail would be required from that source to verify the statement in the first place. Gatoclass (talk) 06:35, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Gatoclass,

With regard to your comments regarding the CFT. Most of the CFT founders came from Janov's primal institute. Jerry Binder and Steve Gold were fully-fledged primal therapists there. Lee Woldenberg was "medical director" there, whatever that means. The two "leaders" of the CFT, Riggs Corriere and Joe Hart, were both in the training program at Janov's institute, even though they probably would never have been approved as therapists. In addition, the CFT itself was founded as an offshoot which was initially devoted to doing primal therapy.

We already disavowed any close relationship between the CFT and Janov's center. We already indicated that the founders of the CFT had been fired by Janov for being "interested only in power". We already indicated that the CFT had moved away from primal therapy entirely before embarking on its abusive cultic course. We indicated those things because that's what the sources claimed.

However, I can see your point somewhat about the section on the CFT. I can see how it may constitute "guilt by association" to include the abuses of people who had been fired years ago.

But I cannot agree with your other edits.

With regard to the "not accepted" remark. I am quite certain that primal therapy is currently not accepted by mainstream psychology. Please note that I am using the term "not accepted" very carefully. I do not just mean that primal therapy is currently unpopular. I mean that it is currently rejected as invalid by mainstream psychology. It's rejection was demonstrated by the poll of psychologists we referenced and by the findings of a federal court in Germany.

I realize that Primal Therapy still has some practitioners. That fact does not mean that primal therapy is accepted. There are some practitioners for almost any theory, even those which have been rejected entirely.

I wish to be clear about one thing. I underwent primal therapy years ago and remain a tremendous proponent of it. So I am not biased against primal therapy or trying to do a "hatchet job" of any kind. I believe that primal therapy is a great idea and I disagree entirely with the consensus of mainstream Psychology against it. Furthermore, I believe that Psychology is a silly field anyway and I place extremely little confidence in its "experts".

Nevertheless, the purpose of the wikipedia article is to represent the consensus of experts, such as they are. As a result, I feel that remarks about primal therapy being not accepted by mainstream psychology, are appropriate because such remarks do represent the consensus of experts.

If you believe that the "not accepted" remark had insufficient references to support it, then we could easily add other references from the criticism section.

I believe that a remark about primal therapy not being accepted should remain in the introduction of the article.Twerges (talk) 11:20, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

(outdenting) The problem is that the phrase "not accepted" is your phrase and not that of your sources. The two sources to which you refer (both of which are only available as abstracts) state the following - the first one states that a random sampling of psychologists in the US determined that primal therapy was one of the four therapies "most in question as to soundness". The German study asserts that "Most psychotherapists in the Federal Republic of Germany do not utilize so-called primal therapeutic processes, perceiving it as based on questionable theoretical premises and dangerous in practice."

We have no way of assessing the reliability of these studies, however, the keyword here is most. The corollary to that is that some psychologists apparently do accept and utilize it. In other words, it is accepted by some psychologists, albeit a minority of them (and since we don't have access to the underlying reports, we have no way of knowing how large or small this minority might be). So to say it is "not accepted" is not correct. All one can safely say from the information to hand is that a couple of studies have indicated that a majority of psychologists regard it as of dubious value.

So much for that issue. Now, here are some other problems I have identified with the article since yesterday. Firstly, the crit section cites a substantial negative comment from a book called The Death of Psychotherapy: From Freud to Alien Abductions. But if you look at the abstract for this book, it states that the author investigated "500 different psychotherapies" and concluded that none of them have any credible scientific studies demonstrating their value over placebo. He is, in effect, condemning the entire field. But now go and have a look at some of the other psychotherapy articles on Wikipedia. Do you see this same author being quoted? No - only on the primal therapy article, it seems, are his views deemed worthy of inclusion.

Furthermore, much of the criticism of PT on this page is on the basis that there is no scientific validation for PT. But on this very same page we are quoting from an author who says there is no scientific validation for any psychotherapeutic method! And indeed, if you go to most of the other wiki articles on psychotherapies, you will not find any scientific studies demonstrating their effectiveness - which is not suprising, given the fact that most of them AFAIK have struggled to produce any. But only on the primal therapy page, do we have statement after statement attesting to the lack of empirical evidence in support of PT. That is why I say this article reads like a hit piece - because only PT is being singled out for this barrage of negative commentary. Gatoclass (talk) 14:07, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Gatoclass,

The current criticism section was produced by former editors of wikipedia who were vehemently opposed to primal therapy and were attempting to warn readers not to undergo it. As a result, they added every conceivable negative quotation about primal therapy which they could find, including quotations from extremely obscure sources, from personal web pages, from unreliable sources, from sources which mention primal therapy critically only in passing (in a parenthetical remark or in a footnote), and so on. They produced a tremendous number of redundant quotations which filled pages, and they added a separate bullet point for each quotation, for emphasis. After which, they added quotations of themselves into the article, in which they claimed that primal therapy was dangerous.

They repeatedly resisted the removal of quotations from themselves. Also, they often responded to disputes by claiming that the disputants had been financially compromised (!!) or that neutral administrators of wikipedia were concealing pro-primal agendas or were not who they claimed to be.

If you think the criticism section is a "hit job" now, then I'm glad you didn't see it before!

As a result, I am not surprised to find that a quotation from a source is taken out of context. I have not read that particular source ("death of psychotherapy"), so I did not know.

If the quotation is taken out of context or implies that all psychotherapies are invalid, then I consent to the removal of that quotation.

With regard to the "not accepted" remark. I still disagree with you on that issue. Although the words "not accepted" are not the exact words used by the underlying source, they represent a summary of what the sources do claim. It is not necessary for an encyclopedia to produce a verbatim representation of the underlying sources; instead, it is the purpose of an encyclopedia to present a summary of the underlying sources. Since the sentence is found in the introduction, where concision is crucial, we must produce a very short summary.

The sources claim that Primal Therapy was found to be "most in question as to soundness" by a poll of psychologists. The sources also claim most psychologists in germany believe it to be theoretically questionable. Taken together, those sources mean that the consensus of psychologists does not accept primal therapy. If psychologists believe it is "most in question as to soundness", then they obviously do not accept it. If they claim that it is "questionable," then they do not accept it. We are trying to produce the briefest possible summary of that material for inclusion in the introduction. A fuller exposition comes later, in the criticism section, where we can quote verbatim from the sources as necessary.

A consensus of experts only requires most experts. It does not require unanimous consent. If a poll of psychologists claims that primal therapy is rated near the bottom of acceptance, then it is not accepted by the consensus, even if a few of the respondents rated it near the top.

"In other words, it is accepted by some psychologists, albeit a minority of them (and since we don't have access to the underlying reports, we have no way of knowing how large or small this minority might be). So to say it is 'not accepted' is not correct."

The respondents rated primal therapy near the bottom of acceptance on net balance. So it is correct to say "not accepted".Twerges (talk) 00:47, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

The problem with the phrase "not accepted" is that it is often interpreted to mean rejected. But when someone says they think something is of dubious value, they are not necessarily rejecting it, they are simply saying they doubt its usefulness. If I have a doubt about something, it means I haven't made up my mind about it, it doesn't necessarily mean I have rejected it. That is an important distinction, and one that needs to be borne in mind when approaching this issue.

I will concede however, that it's arguably justifiable to include some sort of statement in the intro alluding to the therapy's apparently somewhat marginal level of acceptance. We just need to be careful in our choice of words in order not to leave a false impression. I would ask you however, not to add anything at the moment, as there is already so much negative material that needs cleaning up that the last thing this article needs is more of it. I'd really like to tackle the crit section first, to get that into a more acceptable shape, before we start thinking about how to word the intro. I think one of the first things that needs doing, is to weed out all the multiple references to the same handful of statements that leave the false impression there is a huge body of data out there discrediting the therapy. We also need to introduce a few more neutral or positive refs to add some balance. When we've done that, then I think we can start looking at what else needs to be done. Gatoclass (talk) 03:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Gatoclass,

That seems reasonable. I'll wait until after you've cleaned up the crit section before proposing a more careful wording for the intro sentence.

By all means, add a few positive references. I found only one offhand: here. I found it by just typing "primal therapy" into medline. It's a preliminary study which indicates that primal therapy is effective.Twerges (talk) 11:02, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

The problem with the phrase "not accepted" is that it is often interpreted to mean rejected...But when someone says they think something is of dubious value, they are not necessarily rejecting it, they are simply saying they doubt its usefulness. If I have a doubt about something, it means I haven't made up my mind about it, it doesn't necessarily mean I have rejected it'.

Other people misunderstandings are not our problem, Gatoclass.

Stick to what the sources say and we shall be OK within Wikipedia rules.

there is already so much negative material that needs cleaning up

If the negative material is well sourced there must be a good reason for the weeding put, Gatoclass.

one of the first things that needs doing, is to weed out all the multiple references to the same handful of statements that leave the false impression there is a huge body of data out there discrediting the therapy.

The fact is that body of data DOES EXIST, Gatoclass.

Randroide (talk) 15:45, 16 November 2008 (UTC)