Dean blows off steam: Can you hear him now?

Now everyone wants to do it.

I’m talking about Howard Dean’s somewhat raucous performance after his poor showing in Iowa. In a tone that combined the high-decibel qualities of Mick Jagger and a great bull ape, the good doctor expressed his frustration by, well, screaming.

It introduced a new factor to the political mainstream.

The idea of the bellow was to project enthusiasm, not instability, to a mostly young audience accustomed to being screamed at anyhow. Mom screams at them. Rock stars scream at them. People selling mattresses on television scream at them. No one just talks anymore. It’s the hallmark of the MTV Generation.

Unfortunately, Dean’s intent to communicate in youthful terms has been misunderstood by those who are seeing him as either coming unhinged or just behaving in a manner that is quite unpresidential. Dark rumors of his quick temper abound.

The idea that the Big Scream might have affected his audience in a negative manner, or even surprised them, wasn’t in evidence in the replays. They just kind of stared at him and then joined in the shouting as he urged them to march on.

The scream is causing such a stir that it is becoming a kind of cultural fad, like waving one’s arms at a rock concert or barking approval at a wrestling match. Dean’s supporters, I hear, have adopted the scream as a symbol of his campaign in a joyful effort to blunt widespread criticism. They’re screaming their support, screaming their pleasure, screaming at each other and screaming back at their moms.

Soon, I’m sure, other candidates will incorporate the political scream into their campaigns in order to cash in on the buzz of what is becoming known as the Iowa Yelp. Unlike Dean’s all-out blast, however, they will no doubt modify their outbursts to fit different occasions. It’s OK to scream full bore at the young or at workers using jackhammers to break up concrete, but not at gatherings of senior citizens, where a sudden loud blast could lead to cardiac arrest.

Meanwhile, while the issue is hot, Dean’s opponents have capitalized on the negative tone of the notoriety surrounding his scream. We can’t have a president, they sniff, who is walking around the Oval Office screaming his fool head off, even if he is simply projecting his delight or astonishment.

They forget the popularity of the primal scream. Although rooted in Freudian research, primal therapy achieved notice along with just about everything else strange and different in the try-anything 1960s. While one side of the room was humming to achieve an alpha state, the other side was screaming to relieve emotional stress. You couldn’t walk through Berkeley without being assaulted by therapeutic cacophony.

Primal therapy involves more than screaming. Other tools, according to the International Primal Assn., include meditation, body work, breath work, psychodrama, bioenergetics, Jungian sandplay, inner-child work and expressive movement. But it’s easier just to scream if you’re too busy to, for instance, involve yourself in Jungian sandplay, whatever that might be.

A primal website offers a 10-step method for scream therapy, which I felt you might be able to utilize in the future as times get worse:

1. Stand up. This frees the diaphragm, enabling more power to go into the scream.

2. Move to an area as far away from anything made of glass as you can get.

3. Open mouth.

4. Scream. The louder the better.

5. See step 4.

6. See step 5.

7. Take a breath.

8. See step 6.

9. See step 8.

10. Stop.

I’m not saying that Dean was practicing a primal scream when he let loose after the Iowa caucuses, but it wouldn’t have been a bad idea. As a medical doctor, he no doubt knew the benefits of relieving his stress before going home. It’s better to scream in a crowd than to go bellowing around the living room. I speak from experience when I say that not many wives will tolerate screaming. It makes dogs howl.

If Dean, indeed, was practicing a primal scream, he modified it by introducing words into the noise, thereby building on the innovations of Freud and Jung. The next day, he was his old self again, radiating serenity and explaining to whoever would listen that he was simply trying to emulate the enthusiasm of his supporters.

Whatever the reason for what some regard as Dean’s unseemly display of frustration, screaming isn’t the worse thing a politician can do. I would personally prefer an occasional bellow to lying, cheating, stealing and other forms of iniquity practiced in Washington, D.C. Screaming might even calm a testosteronic need to go to war to prove one’s manhood. Dean could be on to something there.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.