Island NineIsle of

Radical Psychic Surgery

(An Extract from: Muse of the Long Haul Thirty-One Isles of the Creative
Imagination)

Copyright, Dr Ian Irvine, 2013 all

rights reserved. All short extracts
from the texts discussed are
acknowledged and used under fair
usage related to review and
theoretical critique under
international copyright law.
Cover Image: The Scream (1893) by
Edvard Munch. [This image is in the
Public Domain in the US and
Australia where this article is
published]. Note: a version of The
Scream featured on the front cover
of Arthur Janovs book The Primal
Scream. The second image used
here I believe is of Sweeney (see
story that follows) though Im
happy to be enlightened as to its
origins.
Publisher: Mercurius Press,
Australia, 2013. NB: This sample is
published as part of the soon to be
print published book: Muse of the
Long Haul: Thirty-One Isles of the
Creative Imagination.

Island Nine The Isle of Radical Psychic Surgery

One of the most uncompromising myths in all the ancient
European traditions concerning the role of creativity in the
life of a poet comes from ancient Ireland. Buile Shuibhne (in
English The Frenzy of Suibne or The Madness of
Sweeney) is the tale of Shuibhne, a pagan Irish king who
comes to misfortune after failing in his attempt to expel the
monk St. Ronan from Eastern Ireland. In a highly symbolic
scene, as well as a ridiculous one, Eorann, the Queen, tries
to stop her husband doing harm to the monk by grabbing
hold of Shuibhnes cloak as he runs outside. The angry king
proceeds naked and succeeds in throwing Ronans psalter
into a nearby lake. Homicide seems imminent until the
naked king is called away to the Battle of Mag Rath. Ronan,
presumably grieving over his lost psalter and probably
relived to be alive, curses the departing pagan with the wish
that the king will ever after wander through the world naked
like a baby.
After another incident on the battlefield in which the king attempts to spear the
hapless monk, the situation between king and future Saint worsens and Ronan requests of
God firstly, that Shuibhne be condemned to fly through the air and secondly, that he shall
die of a cast spear. The new Christian God apparently hears both requests and poor Shuibhne
is unable to rejoin the battle instead falling into fits of madness involving trembling and
frenzied flight to various parts of Irelandnaked of course.
Its not all bad for Shuibhne between bouts of madness he becomes a wonderful
poet, and some of the loveliest ancient Irish poetry describes his exile from civil society, his
sadness at being separated from his wife, Eorann (as well as her eventual rejection of him
after all he had rather strong body odour by the end!), and his daily encounters with wild
nature. In his loneliness, and despite his madness, he becomes rather fond of Irelands plants
and animals.
Eventually the monks of St. Moling take him inas it turns out just before his
freakish death at the hands (or rather the spear) of the jealous husband of the monasterys
cook. He dies, however, a good Christianhaving accepted the new religion in his final
hours.
What interests me about this story, and others like ite.g. similar tales about the
madness of Merlin and the Scottish figure, Lailoken (the prophetic naked, hairy, wild man of
the woods)is the link between supernatural powers and prolonged periods in the wilds.
The close association between madness and creativity is also at issueand Im fascinated by
the fact that Merlin/Myrddins 50 years of insanity resulted in him becoming the wisest man
in all Britain. Poetry in those days was a gift of the unseen realms, it was produced out of a
poets power of poetic insight (Welsh: awenyddian) or great knowledge (Irish: imbas
forosnai), which was heightened by various means, most unhygienically by chewing bits of
red-raw cat, pig or dog flesh.
Anyone watching a person in the throes of what Arthur Janov describes as a primal
would likely, if deprived of context, judge the person mad. Though I did not spend 50 years
in the wilderness eating berries and conversing with field mice I did have a period in the
Australian interior on a 40 acre block of land that was ten minutes by car from a small town.
During that period I probably appeared to city folk as a semi-naked wild man plucking
away on my often out of tune guitar and occasionally primaling away the toxins of the

urbanised, highly regulatedthat is civilisedup-bringing that had been my lot since early
childhood. Like Merlin, but unlike Shuibhne, I eventually regained my reason and was, I
like to think, a little bit wiser about the true ways of the world before I rejoined the happy
drones of our hyper-capitalist society!
Lionel Exell ran a personal improvement centre specialising in a combined Primal- Groffian
approach. Id seen his ad in an Australasian New Age magazine before contacting him by
mail and booking myself in for an intensive in early 1987. He was in the process of shifting
from Doveton in Melbourne to Bendigo. He said hed have a house built by April or so. For
the first time in a year or two I felt motivated to work more consistently and save up some
money in order to purchase an airline ticket. It was a period of high unemployment in New
Zealand, and this fact had meshed nicely with my own lack of motivation to do anything
much but write music, reflect on my life, take care of my baby daughter, Lena, and play
indoor cricket with old school friends once or twice a week.
My life was in a holding patternan interstitiumbut I was acutely aware that we
needed money in order to raise our child and Id better find something worth doing in the
world soon. Id worked at a variety of jobs since returning from the UK driver/glazier,
builders laborer, paint mixer in a factory, early morning cleaner and milk technician with
the NZ Dairy Board, but none had fulfilled me for any length of time. Id even attempted to
return to university to study arts part-time but the cost had been prohibitive and many of my
friends had moved on. I was a proverbial fish out of water vocationally and suspected that
until I could undergo primal therapy I might not know what I really wanted to do with my
life.
This proved to be the case.
I arrived alone in the Central Victorian town of Bendigo in late January 1987. My first weeks
were spent in a tent at the Central City Caravan Park. Id arrived in the middle of a typical
late January Bendigo heatwave. I remember drinking a lot of water and fruit-juice and feeling
excited about what lay ahead, though a little overwhelmed at finding myself in yet another
strange town among people I didnt know. I was also soon missing my ten-month old
daughter as well as my partner. The plan was to have my introductory interview with Lionel
and then decide whether what he was doing recognisably matched what Janov was doing in
the US and whether I felt enough trust to undergo an intensive program with him. Having
read a fair bit of Alexander Lowens work on Bioenergetics and Reichs theories concerning
character armouring I remember thinking that at a stretch Id be prepared to accept a
combined Primal-Reichian therapy modelanything that didnt involve religion or a refusal
to accept cathartic outbursts. Most of all I wanted acceptance of occasional cathartic
outbursts! something that had been missing among the various new age therapists Id met
in NZ who pretended to be do Primal.
After all the reading and research I was also beginning to fancy psychotherapy as a
possible future careerin many humanistic and psychoanalytic therapies one has to undergo
therapy oneself in order to become a therapist. I remember checking out the fees associated
with undertaking training programs with Janov in the US. The intellectual in me was also
trying to merge aspects of the Primal, Reichian and Jungian systems, since even in my
desperate state it seemed clear to me that each approach had significant flaws. Simultaneous
with all this research on psychology I was hearing songs and poems occasionally, and was
about to begin an experimental novel based on Pynchons postmodernist style of writing.
Although the desire to become a musician or writer had retreated into the background
between 1985 and 1987 it had never completely left me. The fantasy of becoming a musician
enacting primal cathartic techniques live on stageas John Lennon had doneseemed
profoundly daring to me in early 1987. I was however too emotionally repressed to even get

up on stage and sing!. At that time a jock residue in my personality also alienated me from
the arts world. Some of these shackles were about to fall away in spectacular fashion.
Although I was unaware of it at the time, I was instinctively engaging, almost daily,
with the two broad vocational areas that have dominated my adult life: 1) creative practice
(poetry, music, fiction writing, etc.) and 2) research into various humanities and social
sciences topics. For twenty years now each domain has inspired and given meaning to the
other. Back in the late 1980s, however, my involvement in these two vocational areas was
both undirected and, most importantly, without remuneration of any sort.
Lionel was in his late 60s when I first met him. It was a warm evening and he was staying
with his brother, Len, whilst monitoring the final stages of the building of his house. His
brother lived in a retirement village south-east of Bendigo and I had to catch a taxi out to the
place in order to undergo the obligatory interview.
Although I learnt some months later that Lionel had suffered with skin cancer since
mid-life due to his inherited, quick to freckle, pale Welsh skin I didnt actually notice on the
first visit the numerous small sores that popped up continually and had to be treated every
month or two in order to avoid him falling victim to a deadly melanoma.
When I arrived, a friendly, balding man slightly shorter than myself welcomed me
warmly, introduced me to his brother and offered me a cool drink. For the first twenty
minutes Len chatted to Lionel about the ins and outs of building and engineering, but Lionel,
who was trying to set me at ease, only seemed interested when he could lead it back to a
conversation about the specifics of what the builders were doing to his home.
After perhaps fifteen minutes Len left the unit do some watering and Lionel led me
into his make-shift officeLens lounge room. He grabbed two kitchen chairs and placed
them approximately two meters apart and we began to talk about what his version of Primal
Therapy involved. Hed run a large primal centre in Doveton after the founding therapists had
moved on, but now wanted to retire to a smaller practice close to his family in Central
Victoria. I asked him various questions: Yes, he did the same kind of intensives Janov
described in his books, but no they werent three weeks long. Also, he said, I tend to give
my clients only one session a dayunless theres an emergency.
He also outlined the relative prices of the intensives and one off sessions and said that
there were some small differences between his approach and the Janovian approach
basically, I learnt later, he had a Groffian transpersonal dimension that to him expanded upon
the basic primal model. The main practical difference was that the sessions began with
discussions to get clients into feeling and ended with clients either relaxing or working
through residues of earlier feelings whilst listening to carefully selected music. Like Janov,
Lionel had a strong emphasis on body work and believed that traumas are stored in the
physiology of the body as much as in the psyche.
Next he asked me about the autobiographical details Id posted him from NZ. What
did I want out of the therapy experience? In what ways did I want to change? What did I
expect from a therapist? Did I have any insights into how I defended against feeling? What
had cricket meant to mewhy had I given up? 1 He also asked me about the situation of my
1

I didnt understand at this time (1985-1990) that withdrawal from public success of any type (the artificial
love of the public) can be psychologically dangerous. One shouldnt do it cold turkey. The cult of massmedia celebrity (that Id sampled through cricket) can destabilise the psyches of vulnerable individuals
especially vulnerable men, who are socially conditioned to believe that we are what we do. There are
psychological pressures related to playing a sport at a high level, sure, but there are also pressures related to
giving it up (to deleting it from ones identity). Celebrity is power, and I believe that giving young people too
much unreal power of this sort can distort their identity development; it encourages ego inflation and can make
ordinary life all but unliveable for some time afterwardsleading to all kinds of problems. It is clear to me now,
at mid-life, that my mid eighties indifference toward vocational issues (as well as my decision not to return to

then partner as well as my feelings about being a young parent. I told him that I desperately
wanted to be a good parent for my young daughter and hoped that by undergoing the process
Id feel much better about myself as a person. I didnt just want to barely function in life, I
wanted to really enjoy life and be capable of giving and receiving affection from others.
Looking back the process of change began there and then in that interview, perhaps with
those specific words.
I decided not to take a taxi back to the caravan park, opting instead to walk back into town in
the cooling early evening air. I remember feeling quite elated. I trusted the guy, I felt he was
practicing precisely the kind of self-development process Id researched and felt good about.
I also felt that he wasnt trying to sell me a religion and that, to put it bluntly, he practiced
what he preached. He had a great sense of humour and talked with passion about his own
experiences as a child and adult. He said that hed come to primal late in life after many years
of quiet desperation unsuccessfully trying to deny the feelings associated with aspects of his
childhood. He said that his own therapy had allowed him to recover parts of his personality
lost since childhood. I remember him looking me in the eye and saying at one point, You
cant do this sort of therapy unless youve actually been there your clients know
instinctively Ive been there, if youre up to the journey I can help. It was simple and
direct and delivered without irony or ego. It caught me off guard but it was also what I
wanted to hear. Experiences related to Lionels spells as an orphan in the Salvation Army run
Box Hill Boys Home in 1934 and from 1937-40 eventually featured in detail in Alan Gills
NZ later after completing my studies) was only partly to do with the immediate need to resolve outstanding
issues from my somewhat fragmented childhood and youth. My indifference was also defensive, related to
perhaps avoiding the realisation that we can only excel at a very high level in one or two professionsif any!
Even if you have talent you also need to be motivated enough to put in the magic 10,000 hours that the experts
say may propel you to national and international levels. Even then you still have to be lucky with injuries,
coaches, opportunities to shine and impress etc.. For every young guy or girl that represents their country in a
sport thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, miss out. After quitting cricket I sensed that I was starting all over
again in my vocational life, and in areas in which I hadnt specialisedafter all Id spent ten years hurling
cricket balls at three skinny bits of wood. It would be years (if ever) before I could achieve at similar levels in
other areas (I was thinking, even then, of poetry, fiction writing and music). I thus started my journey toward a
different vocation aware (but not really aware) that the social power/recognition, adrenalin surges, etc. that went
with life as a professional cricketer might never come my way again (strangely enough part of me was quite
relieved at this). Over the years Ive barely talked about this aspect of my life to anyone but my closest friends
and family. Sports capacity to define a person for a lifetime, in the process effacing all other aspects of
personality, is part of its social powerno point denying it. Sport attracts millionsthe fans cheer and shout for
their heroes, they worship them. If you play one of the more influential sports you may even become a national
hero. All well and good if your sporting persona matches your inner adult identity. For my part, I pulled up
perhaps instinctivelyjust short of being defined ever after as a cricketer and though this caused me some
problems, it also had its benefitsthe older Ive got the more benefits Ive perceived. Many of my
acquaintances in NZ still see me as a cricketer, a fast bowler specifically. My Australian identity, however, is
completely wrapped up with poetry/literature, academia, and music. Im fine with this since these are the
essence of who I am in the inner vocational sense. Whether I am successful or not in these areas seems more or
less irrelevant as a consequence. Of course it would be too easy to suggest that the identity transition from
cricketer-economist to writer-teacher was easy. It wasnt. Theres probably been a script running
unconsciously since the mid-eighties that goes something like this: I need to eventually be really, really good at
whatever else I choose to do in life this is the only way Ill be able to justify to myself giving up everything
that cricket offered me. Given psychoanalysis (whether Freudian, Jungian or Reichian) had nothing much to
say about such experiences my cold turkey from elite sport remained unacknowledged between 1985 and
1990. In retrospect I didnt handle the vocational (and perhaps even aspects of the personal) backlash well,
though many have probably done much worse. For a time I simply couldnt stick at any other job I had a go at
ordinary work held no appeal whatsoever to me. In fact I experienced 9-5 work as a kind of torturein
retrospect, part of me was likely missing the adrenalin spikes, even the physical extremism, that goes with
bowling 20 overs in a day at 135km per hour. But adrenalin spikes are irrelevant to a 23 year old father
wishing to provide for his young daughter.

ground-breaking book Orphans of the Empire (pp. 206-214).

I phoned New Zealand later that night telling my partner, Pack your bags, this is the
real deal, I think were going to be here in Bendigo for a while. Im booked an intensive for
March. The following day I began looking for rental accommodation and promptly came
across Hayden Mathers, a tall friendly builder and tree-lopper who became a life-long friend.
He offered me the front part of his large Georgian-style home, which had been sealed off as a
separate unit. The price was good, the bond also reasonable, especially compared to what
wed been paying in Auckland. He also had a young daughter, so in some senses we were
both going through the child-rearing experience at the same timethough he had his life in
order!
However, it wasnt just Dalia and ten month old Lena that arrived from New Zealand
to take up residence in the house. My brother, Andy, and his partner, Christine, also showed
up and needed somewhere cheap to live. After touch-down Andy first headed for Adelaide to
catch up with some old friends. When we met up in Bendigo, however, he was almost broke.
He and Christine promptly contributed to the rent bill while we all looked for work and a
future. Between the four adults we began our new life in Australia with no work, no
completed qualifications and very little money. Not a particularly auspicious start!
Summary: Creativity and Psychobiological Life Rhythms
Its worthwhile looking at the specifics of life on the Isle of Radical Psychic Surgery since
such therapies have the potential to inspire creative people in unique ways. In my experience,
they unleash profound psychological energies associated with realms of being we are
ordinarily unconscious of. A warning, however, they are not for the faint-hearted!
How useful are the Primal, Reichian and Groffian approaches for writers and artists
seeking personal growth and inspiration? I think that any release of deep emotion in a
nurturing atmosphere can be transformative and liberating for creative peopleand on
multiple levels. I do not ascribe to the belief (as expressed, for example, by Rilke in relation
to his fears about psychoanalysis) that deep exploration of ones past might clear out both a
writers neuroses and creative genius. In my experience, the opposite is probably closer to the
truth: one becomes more creative through explorationif, that is, the personal growth
modality one opts for is broad enough, open-minded enough etc. to facilitate critique and
refinement. Lionels model was simultaneously both broad enough (from a creative
perspective) and psychoanalytic enough to offer me considerable succour in the late 80s early
90sdespite my having some reservations about certain phenomena Grof associated with the
transpersonal unconscious.
From a practical story-telling perspective those involved in all three modalities
(Primal, Reichian and Groffian) begin to explore minute aspects of their pastsbut in a
deeply organic, intuitive (rather than merely intellectual) way. Typically they encounter all
kinds of stories, events, etc. that possess emotional charge, sensual vividness, etc. (remember
these modalities profess to take clients into old memories/traumas but in my experience they
also take you back to more positive childhood experiences which can also be usefully for
artists and writers). There are dangers here, however, the experiences may be so intense that
the person fails to develop the distance required to turn such experiences into art or
literaturein terms of fiction writing the person can be stuck in one highly personal point of
view, applying it endlessly to all manifestations of their creativity. The other danger is the
tendency toward excessive expressionismnarrative, characterization, writing craft, etc.
may all be abandoned in favour of a gigantic told (not shown), Munchian scream, blurt, etc.
I occasionally made both of these mistakes in the early 90s. Just as often, however, the
techniques liberated me to write songs, stories and poemsindeed for a time in 1991 songs

and poems in particular seemed to arrive almost at will (a ceaseless song), with little
intellectualism or even excessive expressionism. Despite this deluge of creative ideas,
however, I still lacked basic knowledge of structural editing back in 1991, and was clueless
when it came to seeking an audience for my work.
A period of intense navel gazing is good, I think, for any writer or artist, however,
there comes a time when rehashing personal memories and obsessions is not enoughone
develops further by relating to the world out there. Here I think, the Primal and Groffian
perspectives are least useful since their sociology is somewhat underdeveloped and
simplistic. This caused problems for me back in the late eighties when my years navel
gazing, living close to nature and looking after my daughter, Lena, left me dangerously
alienated from the economic realities of the modern world. I was certainly feeling much
better about myself as a person on many levels, but there were new self-esteem issues
emergingrelated to the lack of a meaningful job with decent pay. Primal had little to say
about the effects of sociological phenomena on psychic health except to suggest that things
worked out once you were freed of primal pain.2
The Primal approach did allow me to be honest about what I was really feeling
concerning my own needsthus about my relationships with other people. Although Primal
(like psychoanalysis generally) has a reputation for parent blaming one of the best results
for me from undergoing Lionels approach was a more affirmative, honest and loving
relationship with my parents. Admittedly I was somewhat luckyboth of my parents were
willing to listen openly and respond constructively to what I was experiencing. This fact
made me realize that Primal reverses the everywhere tendency in our society to suppress
genuine emotionespecially in children. If we had more (any?) social institutions prepared
to honor genuine emotion (rather than false emotion) across the life-span I believe that most
of the more radical therapeutic interventions (psychiatry, drugs, etc.) would be unnecessary
for many people. To live is to feel. To live is also, occasionally, to hurtto suffer. There is
no avoiding occasional sufferingthe Multiverse is set up thus. The Primal, Bioenergetic,
Reichian and Groffian modalities provide people with the means to respond honestly and
effectively to hurts and disappointments as they happen. This skilleffective response to
hurtis also, I believe, an essential trait of genuine writers and artists.
Though Janov had little to say about spirituality its true to say that many ex-primal
folk become more rather than less concerned with what are usually termed 'spiritual
questions' after therapy. Their spirituality, however, is often quite different to that associated
with the mainstream religions. It tends toward what we might call relational-pantheism. Exprimalists often feel very close to nature and some have experiences we traditionally
associate with the world-view of Romantic poets, or with people from primordial
(animistic/shamanic) traditions. This was certainly my experience after several years of
intense work on myself.
Between 1988 and 2005 I espoused an approach to creativity that fell somewhere
between that of Janov, Reich, Grof and Jung though with an emphasis on acknowledging all
aspects of a persons past and present relational support circles (a concept drawn from
relational and community psychology).
Adopting aspects of the transpersonal perspective implicit to Grof (and Jung) but
absent in Janov, Reich and relational psychology, proved liberating to me as a creative
person. It allowed me to avoid the disenchanted materialist constraints placed on creativity
by most other Western psychologies (but most evident in behaviourism, psychobiology and
cognitive psychology).

Reich had more to say on these issues, similarly Maslow and Fromm.

The Appearance of Madness

In my opinion, neither Lailoken, Merlin or Shuibhne were ever really maddespite
appearances. I doubt the stories attached to these figures would have survived so long had
madness been the sole theme. Perhaps genuine psycho-spiritual healing (cousin to genuine
creativity) sometimes looks a lot like madness (or what we these days call mental illness) to
Fromms automaton robots addicted as they are to the reality paradigms beloved of the
herd. The unconscious has been explored by all manner of psychologists since Freud first
breached its gothic gates back at the turn of the twentieth century, however, after Grof
psychologists are unlikely to be able to descend much further without resort to ideas drawn
from religion and mysticism. No matter, I say, for such an impasse leads to the loveliest of
poetries.

Organon
is a foundation for the selfs
promised home
something
flesh and blood of psyche
to build upon,
an embodied utopia
Heliconiaof daily being.
An evanescent
apparitional possibility
(corposant?). Imagine
it in every corpuscular
moment. Reich
dreamed of Organon
the soul as
St. Elmos Fire high above
the late-industrial dross,
my un(encumbered) limbs in
bands of (dead)organic
energy. He scraped
at the wet cement, jackhammered the hard
(body)stuff. The
ultimate materialism? matterMater-ialist? Antifascist, authoritarians beware! hes
coming with reflex, seeks an
unencumbered organic
being
in
the moment.
Pulverise the armour! But
its not that simple
tangled up in fields of layers of
memory. The ghostwhispering past in your
sensoriumout therethey are
infiltrated; youre seeking
opsonin of the diseased
spectral flow
call it immunisation, we
dont possess a metaphor
hence Organon.

After his foundation I encountered

beings in multifarious postures of relation
surrounded by orbits, circlesbetter still
frequency orbits. Various
loves
occupy the same space-time
continuum.
After ontogenesis failed, could not
construct a self apart
from the morass of
Others. Thus confess vital organs of
the psyche in extension and
right to the perimeter fence
of hybridityOvids signifiers
become a tree goat eagle
beyond this point!
My Organon
concentric ad infinitumeven
the body is a distinct frequency
of being in need. My DOR-migrant
ruptures are contained
in orbits not geared
to absence, thus
we fragment.
DOR lodged like a membranous alien
in the solid dead stuff of psyche
stiffened off. This
is not an easy vision, but
Organon soothes the nightmarethe promise
of a swimming pool
of warm being, a Romantic pleasure-dome
the
manic construction
of poem.

Author Bio (as at May 2013)

Dr. Ian Irvine (Hobson) is an Australian-based poet/lyricist,
writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in
publications as diverse as Humanitas (USA), The Antigonish
Review (Canada), Tears in the Fence (UK), Linq (Australia)
and Takahe (NZ), as well as in a number of Australian national
poetry anthologies: Best Australian Poems 2005 (Black Ink
Books) and Agenda: Australian Edition, 2005. He is the author
of three books and co-editor of three journals and currently
teaches in the Professional Writing and Editing program at
BRIT (Bendigo, Australia) as well as the same program at
Victoria University, St. Albans, Melbourne. He has also taught history and social theory at La Trobe
University (Bendigo, Australia) and holds a PhD for his work on creative, normative and dysfunctional
forms of alienation and morbid ennui.