Migraines and Dreams

About the Book

The method of scientific investigation used in this book and explained in its first chapter is the method described by Isaac Newton in his book The Principia, which is continually used by him and all other physicists but not by psychologists. The great truth exposed by using this method to understand migraine is that the head pain and the associated symptoms are automatic responses created by evolution and controlled unconsciously to realize self-protection and survival. This fact is also derived from Freud's and Jung's works by using Newton's method. It is also shown that the results of research on the physiological processes that are related to the production of headache do not make the above etiology impossible but rather suggest it. A migraineur has a problem that harms his/her interests seriously, but he/she does not deal with it adequately for various reasons and represses it in some measure. His/her unconscious produces symptoms that carry analogic messages urging him/her to resolve that problem and also punish him/her for not doing that. Sometimes a symptom is so timely and intense that it prevents a self-harming action. Thus, headache means: "Get wise; stop making that mistake; stop hurting yourself!" Eye pain means: "Don't ignore the events that hurt you!" Nausea and vomiting mean: "Don't tolerate ugly events!" The other symptoms too carry self-protective messages related to the patient's life experiences.

Psychotherapy consists of making a patient consciously understand and deal adequately with the problem that his/her unconscious wishes him/her to resolve so that the symptoms become unneeded as message carriers. Evidently, this method necessitates cooperation with the unconscious, whereas all existing therapies combat its products, i.e., the symptoms, and thereby make the symptoms all the more needed. A migraineur can do this work with or without the help of a therapist who is familiar with this method. Dreams too are automatic responses that serve to realize self-protection and survival and carry more diagnostic and therapeutic information and ideas compared to symptoms. Also, dreams can be induced that deal with consciously chosen issues. Therefore symptoms and dreams are interpreted together, as explained in this book. This theory predicts a patients' relevant life experiences in general terms, facilitates the discovery of their particulars, explains the causes, meanings, and functions of his/her symptoms and dreams, and realizes very fast and definitive cures. More than 120 headache and facial pain sufferers have been cured in very short times using this method, as illustrated by 50 original case histories

This book is published for the use of headache patients and their therapists and contains the relevant chapters of my earlier book COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL CYBERNETICS OF SYMPTOMS, DREAMS, LATERALIZATION: THEORY, INTERPRETATION, THERAPY. This earlier book exposes the adaptive and self-protective functions of the most conspicuous automatic responses such as pain, fear, anxiety, repression, all symptoms of primary mental disorders, response to stage and screen plays, laughter and tears, structural responses such as cerebral lateralization, and so forth. The fact that all those phenomena can be explained, predicted, and controlled on the basis of the same principles proves that those principles reflect the truth.

About the Author

I am holding two masters degrees in electrical engineering and physics. I learned automatic controls from engineering, and the methods of scientific investigation from physics. I have read psychology and philosophy books beginning at age 15 and also observed the behaviors of many mental patients at a very large mental hospital where my uncle worked as a psychiatrist. I also found time to study films and have produced 8 mm, 16 mm, and 35 mm films, because I considered the cinema a psychology laboratory where the most expensive and varied experiments of certain types could be performed. My first success in psychology has been the explanation of the automatic audience responses to films, such as fear, suspense, surprise, laughter, tears, and so forth, and the methods used by the masters of cinema to induce them, including the Freudian free-floating anxiety. An abstract of my first book Film and Suspense appeared in the February 1957 issue of Psychological Abstracts published by the American Psychological Association. Hitchcock wrote to me about this book, "I... find it extremely clever in the analyses of the filmmaker and the audience." I later found out that Hitchcock had learned the use of free-floating anxiety from Shakespeare, although he had learned its theory from Freud, and that Freud never understood that Shakespeare knew about this phenomenon and used it consciously to control audience reaction. I analyzed in my books Hitchcock's two best films shot by shot, and Shakespeare's two greatest tragedies line by line.

I busied myself full time with psychology and psychotherapy after I retired from engineering in 1980. I have cured in very short times more that 120 patients suffering from migraine and tension headaches and facial neuralgia and other neurotic symptoms.