The John Lennon songs inspired by scream therapy
Due to his traumatic childhood, John Lennon carried a severe amount of baggage into adulthood, problems that stayed with him long after The Beatles split. After his band had parted ways, and his life was set to head down a new unknown avenue, Lennon finally decided the time was right to deal with his deep-rooted issues, opting for scream therapy.
Lennon’s issues stemmed from abandonment. While his early years were spent under the care of his mother, Julia, before she reluctantly agreed to let him live with his Aunt Mimi. Although his mother remained a prominent figure, she tragically passed away when Lennon was only a teenager after being hit by a drunk-driving police officer.
Additionally, Lennon’s relationship with his father, Alf, was problematic. Before moving to New Zealand in 1946, he took his son on a trip to Blackpool and planned to take him to the other side of the world. Thankfully, Julia stopped him from doing so and kept John in Liverpool. Alf didn’t reappear in his life until Lennon was one of the most recognisable faces on the planet.
However, Lennon didn’t search out scream therapy. Instead, it came to him thanks to psychologist Arthur Janov. After releasing his revolutionary self-help book The Primal Scream: Primal Therapy, The Cure for Neurosis, Janov sent copies to various notable people, including Lennon, who was inspired by it.
Although many people in the psychology community have condemned scream therapy and Janov’s teachings, the tactic seemingly worked on Lennon for a period. When he began scream therapy, Lennon was recording John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, an album heavily inspired by the sessions that dealt with abandonment.
After he and Yoko Ono had several sessions in London with Janov, they flew out to Los Angeles to focus on scream therapy for several months. However, due to Visa issues, Lennon didn’t complete the full year of treatment as Janov had intended.
Janov later said of Lennon’s state: “The level of his pain was enormous … He was almost completely nonfunctional. He couldn’t leave the house, he could hardly leave his room … This was someone the whole world adored, and it didn’t change a thing. At the center of all that fame and wealth and adulation was just a lonely little kid.”
On the impact of the sessions, Lennon later said to David Sheff: “Now I can cry. That’s what I learned from primal therapy. We were there six months. We had a nice house in L.A. We’d go down to the session, have a good cry, and come back and swim in the pool.”
However, he conceded that similarly to “acid or a good joint”, scream therapy only delivered a temporary resolution, and soon enough, he needed to “go back for another fix”.
While scream therapy didn’t change him forever, the whole album is littered with realisations and deep lyrics which wouldn’t have existed without him following Janov’s advice. For example, ‘Mother’ explores his complex relationship with the late Julia. On the track, he painfully sings: “Mother, you had me, But I never had you, I, I wanted you, You didn’t want me.”
Another example of scream therapy influencing his lyrics is ‘God’, which appeared on the same album. Janov later claimed the song was inspired by a conversation during a therapy session, stating: “He rented a house in Bel Air, which is a very ritzy area here, and we talked about things. He said: ‘What about God?’ and I would go on and on about [how] people who have deep pain generally tend to believe in God with a fervency.”
Janov continued: “And he said: ‘Oh, you mean God is a concept by which we measure our pain.’ Just bang. I would go all around it and he was there, just like that. And that was John. John could take very profound philosophical concepts and make it simple.”
Meanwhile, Lennon howls on the track ‘Well, Well, Well’, which can be interpreted as a nod to scream therapy.
Although the theme of the whole John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band could be attributed to scream therapy, three songs on the record certainly wouldn’t have existed in the same form without Janov.
John Lennon songs inspired by scream therapy:
- ‘Mother’
- ‘God’
- ‘Well, Well, Well’
