Try it for yourself if you want, but primal scream probably doesn’t work. The briefly trendy psychological treatment—developed in the early 1970s by psychotherapist Arthur Janov as part of his larger primal therapy theories—was supposed to treat underlying childhood trauma that leads to adult neuroses. Scream, scream, scream, Janov instructed.
Scream as loud as you can, and you will connect with a repressed core of your being, thereby allowing yourself to rid inner demons. Janov thought primal therapy would essentially cleanse the world of mental health issues, which—let me check—OK, yep, didn’t happen. But the concept of primal scream became a sensation after John Lennon practiced it during the making of his first solo record, Plastic Ono Band , to harrowing results.
It’s unclear how much Lennon really improved his mental health in the long term by screaming his lungs out. But the art he made in doing so—a song like “Mother,” for example, pushing himself into a dark and vulnerable place, and then capturing what he saw for us to examine—is undeniable. A good scream, whether in music or in film, is hard to fake and difficult to not be moved by when done honestly.
“Primal” is the right word. Someone yelling from the core of their being is the sound of society falling apart. It’s the sound of barbarism taking hold, however briefly.
And it is compelling to witness. MaXXXine and Longlegs are hitting theaters and—don’t mind the jump scare— The Blai.
