Jobs’s compulsive search for self-awareness also led him to undergo primal scream therapy, which had recently been developed and popularized by a Los Angeles psychotherapist named Arthur Janov. It was based on the Freudian theory that psychological problems are caused by the repressed pains of childhood; Janov argued that they could be resolved by re-suffering these primal moments while fully expressing the pain—sometimes in screams. To Jobs, this seemed preferable to talk therapy because it involved intuitive feeling and emotional action rather than just rational analyzing. “This was not something to think about,” he later said. “This was something to do: to close your eyes, hold your breath, jump in, and come out the other end more insightful.”

喬布斯對自我意識的瘋狂追尋也導致他開始嘗試原始尖叫療法，這一療法由洛杉磯的精神治療醫師亞瑟·亞諾夫（ArthurJanov）發明，當時剛剛開始流行。這一療法基于弗洛伊德的理論：心理問題都是由受到壓抑的兒童時期的痛苦造成的。亞諾夫認為這些問題可以通過再次經歷那些痛苦時刻來治愈——通過尖叫來完整地發泄那份痛苦。在喬布斯看來，這一療法比談話療法要好，因為這其中包含了直觀的感受和情感上的活動，而不僅僅只是理性的分析。“這種療法不需要你去思考，”他后來說，“而需要你去行閉上眼睛，屏住呼吸，全身心投入其中，這之后你就會獲得更深刻的見解。”

A group of Janov’s adherents ran a program called the Oregon Feeling Center in an old hotel in Eugene that was managed by Jobs’s Reed College guru Robert Friedland, whose All One Farm commune was nearby. In late 1974, Jobs signed up for a twelve-week course of therapy there costing $1,000. “Steve and I were both into personal growth, so I wanted to go with him,” Kottke recounted, “but I couldn’t afford it.”

一群亞諾夫的信徒在尤金市的一座老舊酒店里經營著一家名為“俄勒閃感覺中心”的機構，而負責管理的正是喬布斯在里德學院的精神導師羅伯特·弗里德蘭，他的團結農場就在附近。1974年底，喬布斯報名參加了那里一個為期12周的治療，花費了1000美元。“史蒂夫和我都在追求個人成長，所以我想和他一起參加，”科特基說，“但是我沒有那么多錢。”

Jobs confided to close friends that he was driven by the pain he was feeling about being put up for adoption and not knowing about his birth parents. “Steve had a very profound desire to know his physical parents so he could better know himself,” Friedland later said. He had learned from Paul and Clara Jobs that his birth parents had both been graduate students at a university and that his father might be Syrian. He had even thought about hiring a private investigator, but he decided not to do so for the time being. “I didn’t want to hurt my parents,” he recalled, referring to Paul and Clara.

喬布斯曾經向自己的密友透露過，他參加治療是因為飽受童年痛苦：被領養并且對親生父母毫無所知。“史蒂夫非常渴望了解自己的親生父母，這樣他就可以更好地認識自己。”弗里德蘭后來說。喬布斯曾經從養父母那里聽說過，自己的親生父母都是大學畢業生，父親可能是敘利亞人。他甚至曾經想要雇用一名私家偵探，但還是決定暫時不那么做。“我不想傷害我的父母。”他回憶說，這里指的是他的養父母。

“He was struggling with the fact that he had been adopted,” according to Elizabeth Holmes. “He felt that it was an issue that he needed to get hold of emotionally.” Jobs admitted as much to her. “This is something that is bothering me, and I need to focus on it,” he said. He was even more open with Greg Calhoun. “He was doing a lot of soul-searching about being adopted, and he talked about it with me a lot,” Calhoun recalled. “The primal scream and the mucusless diets, he was trying to cleanse himself and get deeper into his frustration about his birth. He told me he was deeply angry about the fact that he had been given up.”

“自己被領養這一事實讓他很掙扎，”伊麗莎白·霍姆斯說，“他覺得這是自己在情感上需要控制的一個問題。”喬布斯承認了這些，他說：“這件事一直困擾著我，我要把精力集中在這上面。”他對格雷格·卡爾霍恩更加坦誠。“對于被領養一事，他作了很多自我剖析，也跟我說了很多，”卡爾霍恩說道，“原始尖叫療法和非黏液飲食，都是他用來凈化自己的方法，并希望借此來洞徹其身世帶給他的沮喪。他告訴我，他的父母握棄了他，他感到非常僨怒。”

John Lennon had undergone the same primal scream therapy in 1970, and in December of that year he released the song “Mother” with the Plastic Ono Band. It dealt with Lennon’s own feelings about a father who had abandoned him and a mother who had been killed when he was a teenager. The refrain includes the haunting chant “Mama don’t go, Daddy come home.” Jobs used to play the song often.

約翰·列儂（JohnLernioii）在1970年也接受了同樣的原始尖叫療法，那年的12月，他和塑膠洋子樂隊（PlasticOnoBand）發布了歌曲《媽媽》。這首歌描述的是列儂對于一個拋棄了自己的父親以及一個在他少年時期就死去的母親的感情。副歌部分有一段讓人無法忘懷的旋律：“媽媽不要走，爸爸快回家……”霍姆斯記得喬布斯經常放這首歌。

Jobs later said that Janov’s teachings did not prove very useful. “He offered a ready-made, buttoned-down answer which turned out to be far too oversimplistic. It became obvious that it was not going to yield any great insight.” But Holmes contended that it made him more confident: “After he did it, he was in a different place. He had a very abrasive personality, but there was a peace about him for a while. His confidence improved and his feelings of inadequacy were reduced.”

喬布斯后來說，事實證明亞諾夫的方法并沒有什么效果。“他提供的只是一個現成的、老套的解決方法，太過簡單了。很明顯，它不可能促成任何自我省悟。”但霍姆斯堅信，治療讓喬布斯變得更自信了。“他接受完治療之后有了改變，”她說，“他原本性格是很粗暴的，但那段時間他很平靜。他的自信心增強了，自卑感減弱了。”

Jobs came to believe that he could impart that feeling of confidence to others and thus push them to do things they hadn’t thought possible. Holmes had broken up with Kottke and joined a religious cult in San Francisco that expected her to sever ties with all past friends. But Jobs rejected that injunction. He arrived at the cult house in his Ford Ranchero one day and announced that he was driving up to Friedland’s apple farm and she was to come. Even more brazenly, he said she would have to drive part of the way, even though she didn’t know how to use the stick shift. “Once we got on the open road, he made me get behind the wheel, and he shifted the car until we got up to 55 miles per hour,” she recalled. “Then he puts on a tape of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, lays his head in my lap, and goes to sleep. He had the attitude that he could do anything, and therefore so can you. He put his life in my hands. So that made me do something I didn’t think I could do.”

喬布斯開始相信自己可以把自信心傳遞給其他人，推動他們去完成以前認為不可能的事情。霍姆斯與科特基分手后，加入了舊金山的一個邪教組織，該組織希望成員切斷與過去所有朋友的聯系。伹是喬布斯完全無視這條禁令，有一天，他開著自己的福特牧場主（FordRancheiro）客貨兩用車來到了邪教的大本營，他對霍姆斯說自己要開車去弗里德蘭的蘋果農場，她也必須一起去。更過分的是，他說她也得開上一段路，盡管她根本不會開手動擋的車。“我們到了開闊的路上之后，他讓我坐在駕駛座上，他負責換擋，直到我們的時速達到每小時55英里，”她說，“然后他開始放迪倫的磁帶《路上的血跡》（BloodontheTracks），把頭枕在我的膝蓋上，睡著了。他的態度就是他什么都會做，因此你也要什么都會。他把自己的性命交到了我手里，讓我做到了以前我認為自己做不到的事情。”

It was the brighter side of what would become known as his reality distortion field. “If you trust him, you can do things,” Holmes said. “If he’s decided that something should happen, then he’s just going to make it happen.”

這就是日后成為他“現實扭曲力場”個人魅力的美好的一面。“如果你相信他，你就能做成事情，”霍姆斯說，“如果他認為某件事應該發生，那他就會盡力讓它發生。”