Pick up Primal Minds, Primal Games: Why We Do What We Do and be prepared for a monumental journey into the human psyche, with detours off the beaten track. There’s a mini-excursion for everyone including academics, dabblers, and pop culture fans. …[And] …it’s not all textbook reading. Illustrative side trips to Hollywood movies, popular literature and fun, accessible graphics and photos give us welcome lookout stops for reflection. Overall, the material is deep and far-reaching, but the authors strive to keep it readable and entertaining.
– The Glebe Report, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Primal Mind uproots the hidden, unconscious programs – millions of years in the making – that run our minds and shape our thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions… It offers a practical guide and path forward for those who seek more sanity, coherence and fulfillment in life.
– Common Ground Magazine, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
The authors, one surmises, had a lot of fun writing this book, and the reader, despite the seriousness and complexity contained between the covers, will find their enthusiasm infectious.
– Island Catholic News, Victoria, B.C., Canada.
The authors tear down the barriers between science, history, politics and psychotherapy to offer penetrating insights into the unconscious behaviour that rules our lives. An absolutely original, challenging, maddening, and ultimately enlightening book.
– Roy MacSkimming, author of Laurier in Love, Macdonald and other novels
This book is a very valuable addition to society’s knowledge as to how to confront and probe deeply into the machinations that unfold within the human mind so as to more effectively cope with the countless challenges of a modern society.
– The Hon. R. Roy McMurtry, O.C., O. Ont., Q.C., L.S.M., Chancellor of York University (2011-2014); Chief Justice of Ontario (1994-2007).
It is a challenging book. Yet… it leaves me feeling energized and uplifted. Reading it, I get a hit of validation of my essential self at a deep level…
– Sonya Makaroff, Health care provider
Primal Mind, Primal Games is a highly original, intricate and deeply thoughtful systematized exploration of the human psyche and its behavioural manifestations, in both the personal and social realms. A challenging and invigorating read, it is theory with a practical dimension.
– Gabor Maté, MD, author, In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction.
I just have to tell you that the book is tremendous … engaging, readable, brilliant, and, for those who choose to allow it, life altering. It is so needed in this weary world! I am forcing myself to read slowly, eking out installments and giving myself time to think. It has given me, and will likely give countless others, an opportunity to live better, richer, happier lives. This is a colossal work. It can change the world. Let the magic begin.
– Holly Larocque, Canadian singer/entertainer
Primal Games: Playing the Trump Card. Have you been biting your nails since the U.S. presidential election of Donald Trump? If so, you may find solace in some explanations for this quandary and many more “big picture” dilemmas in Book Two of Primal Mind, Primal Games… Having explored the complex nature of the individual mind in their first book… the duo now turns their attention to the world-at-large and how their Primal Process theory and its mindsets affect the global picture across generations, societies, institutions and governments.
– The Glebe Report, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (June 2017)
This is a fascinating book, drawing on psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, and spirituality to hold up a mirror for us as human beings. Why do we do the things that we do?
This is also a passionate book! Some of us may get a little bit overwhelmed by the thoroughness of the explanations and the careful precision of the states of mind and their role over the course of our evolution as a species. Within all of this, there is something profound being said. As human beings, we are frequently caught in a game of seeking success, power, and strength. We move through different mindsets, we draw on different behavioural strategies, we react as best we can to the REALity that we live in. But this game tends to be one where the vulnerable must put up hard walls of protection, where the weak are crushed, where the broken are pushed aside. This is a game where everybody loses. Primal Mind, Primal Games is a call for each of us to wake up. It is up to each of us to learn to live in harmony, to develop the self-awareness that liberates us and others from our primal games. Bajramovic and LeMay describe Integrating Self Function as a way for the mind to operate with greater openness. It is a path of growth in humility, in presence, and most importantly in openness to others. It is listening to the vulnerable that we discover our own vulnerability. It is in reaching out to the weak that we discover our own weakness. It is in welcoming the broken that we discover our own brokenness. It is together that we can grow in greater love.
This book is a challenge and an invitation. If we dare to look at the reflection it offers, we will discover that each of us is responsible and integral in this evolution of humanity, an evolution of peace.
– Jean Vanier, L’Arche à Trosly, Breuil, France
This hefty* debut explores an all-embracing theory of evolutionary psychology… Bajramovic and LeMay attempt to forge a theory of social psychology, evolutionary biology, spirituality, politics—in general, all the activities of the human race. This sounds ambitious — and the scope of their explanation certainly is — but the theory Bajramovic and LeMay expound is (once it’s parsed out) surprisingly basic, focusing on the interplay of three Primal Mindsets: fighting, appeasing, and defeated—three factors Bajramovic derived from his work on victimization… In addition to the Primal Games [these mindsets] engender, the “Integrating Self Function,” and the four “force factors” (i.e., recognizing needs and the possibility of fulfilling them)—have sufficient explanatory power to cover the whole spectrum of human behavior…. To prove the primacy of these mindsets, the authors use a range of sources, mining neuroscience and psychology on brain function and finding examples of the three Primal Mindsets in history and pop culture. Ultimately, their purpose is in self-help: “Understanding the process can help us more fully ‘humanize’ our environments. It can help transform how we operate our institutions, how we educate children [and how we] conduct politics and the affairs of business in a more humane fashion.
– Kirkus Review [Abridged version]
*Kirkus made use of the word ‘hefty’ in their opening statement because the text they reviewed was a combination of what became Books One and Two, minus two chapters on science which were added to Book II. Most of the above reviewers did likewise. Both the Island Catholic News and Common Ground Magazine’s reviewers read the shorter Book One version with only 8 chapters.