ABSTRACT
The “primal abandon” owes less to the original record by the Isley Brothers as to The Beatles’ own performance of an encounter with an imaginary American otherness that is conveyed to the audience in a contagious screaming that is returned a thousand fold. By the time of Shea stadium, all the Beatles had become tired of acting like the mannequins that they had become for their audience. Dissatisfied with the boredom and pointlessness of touring, The Beatles retired from public performance and, as is well known, concentrated on recording, undertaking a series of innovative, influential, and highly regarded studio albums. Arthur Janov’s therapy involves somehow connecting with the unconscious “intolerable pain” that provides the lining and support of consciousness, and which is an effect of disconnection and symbolisation, and unleashing it in a primal scream.
