Primal therapy is a trauma-based psychotherapy popularized by Arthur Janov. During therapy the patient is encouraged to cry, scream, and beat objects to express childhood, perinatal and prenatal feelings. Janov claimed that in primal therapy patients would find their real needs and feelings after experiencing all their accumulated pain. The absence of peer-reviewed outcome studies to substantiate this claim led to the therapy falling out of favor in academic and psychotherapeutic circles.
