Body, Self And Soul: The Evolution Of A Wholistic

Jacqueline A. CARLETON, PhD*

* Body Psychotherapy Journal, Editor, USA e-mail :[email protected]

Summary In this article, the evolution of a wholistic psychotherapy is stressed and moreover, its historical development and characteristic is also pointed out. Key Words: Body Psychotherapy, Alternative Treatment, Psychoanalysis

Body and energy psychotherapy may be seen as Whether they are called shamans, healers, curan- an example of an “alternative” treatment within the deros, medicine men, priests or doctors, their func- larger “alternative treatment” of psychoanalysis or tion is similar: to heal the body and soul of disease. psychotherapy. In a developmental trajectory that This paper will focus on its more recent roots in the may be seen as homologous to that of alternative or rationalism of the enlightenment and the positivism complementary medicine, body and energy psy- of 19th century science and philosophy from which chotherapy began when one of Freud’s followers, psychoanalysis was birthed by . It , proposed psychological theories too will trace the trajectory from a chemical, physiologi- radical for the already challenging young psychoana- cal model of the mind utilized by Freud through lytic movement and was ejected from its midst. This developments in the wider field of psychology to the ejection left him, and even more, his followers, to evolution of body and energy psychotherapy as it is move further into a rejection of the psychoanalytic now practiced. I shall conclude with a description of “parent” with the result that until roughly the 1980’s, Core Energetics, one form of body and energy psy- many schools of body and energy therapy rejected chotherapy which incorporates a spiritual dimension much of psychology and failed to take account of in its practice. each other as well. However, more recently, especially since the Definition of body psychotherapy founding of the European and American Associations (European Association for Body for Body Psychotherapy, communication among Psychotherapy Website) schools and with the larger psychoanalytic communi- Body Psychotherapy is a distinct branch of ty has improved. More and more clinicians are recog- Psychotherapy, which has a long history, and a large nizing and experiencing training in both areas, scien- body of literature and knowledge based upon a sound tific validation is beginning and academic journals theoretical position. are appearing. It involves an explicit theory of mind-body func- This is clearly in tandem with increased interest in tioning which takes into account the complexity of the mind-body connection by the larger medical com- the intersections and interactions between the body munity. and the mind. The common underlying assumption is Body and energy psychotherapy is far from new. that the body is the whole person and there is a func- Forms exist in virtually all indigenous cultures. tional unity between mind and body. The body does

30 JISHIM 2002, 2 BODY, SELF AND SOUL: Jacqueline A. CARLETON THE EVOLUTION OF A WHOLISTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY not merely mean the "soma" separate from the mind, National Institutes for Health now has a Congress- the "psyche". Body-Psychotherapy considers this mandated National Center for Complementary and functional unity fundamental. Alternative Medicine that acknowledges the impor- It involves a developmental model; a theory of tance of the mind-body connection in understanding personality; hypotheses as to the origins of distur- health. The climate was not always so welcoming and bances and alterations, as well as a rich variety of open.” diagnostic and therapeutic techniques used within the “It was only forty-four years ago that Wilhelm framework of the therapeutic relationship. There are Reich, widely considered the father of much of mod- many different and sometimes quite separate ern Western psychotherapeutic thought on the con- approaches within Body-Psychotherapy, as indeed nection between body and psyche, died a disrep- there are in the other branches of Psychotherapy. utable and heartbreaking death in Lewisburg Federal Body-Psychotherapy is also a science, having Penitentiary. Advocates of Reich’s theories, who saw developed over the last seventy years from the results themselves as part of a leading edge in the late 1940's of research in biology, anthropology, ethology, and early 1950's, withdrew into tightly closed groups neuro-physiology, developmental psychology, or into quiet practice. His theories, the body psy- neonatology, perinatal studies and many more disci- chotherapy he developed, and much of the discussion plines. A wide variety of techniques are used within of the mind-body connection went underground at Body-Psychotherapy such as touch, movement and that time. However, this underground time was breathing. There is therefore a link with some Body spelled by two periods of florescence. One was in the Therapies, Somatic techniques, and some comple- late 1960's and early 1970's and one is happening mentary medical disciplines. now. Before the current period, a person often found Reich’s theories or a practitioner of Reichian therapy Directly or indirectly the body-psychotherapist or one of several offshoots through a winding series works with the person as an essential embodiment of of accidents or serendipity. Although Reich was a mental, emotional, social and spiritual life. He/she maverick and his ideas were radical at the time, they encourages both internal self-regulative processes did not form in a vacuum. Indeed, the intellectual and and the accurate perception of external reality. cultural climate of Europe during the second half of Through his/her work, the body-psychotherapist the nineteenth century and early portion of the twen- makes it possible for alienated aspects of the person tieth century spurred developments that had deep to become conscious, acknowledged and integrated implications for the field of psychology.” parts of the self.

The History of Body Psychotherapy Freud (Adapted from Barbara Goodrich-Dunn and Elliot Greene, “In 1873, Freud entered the University of Vienna “Voices: A History of Body Psychotherapy”, USA BODY PSY- to study medicine. Freud borrowed heavily from CHOTHERAPY JOURNAL, The Official Publication of the Helmholtz’s principle of the conservation of energy. USABP, vol.1, No.1, 2002, pp.53-117) The conservation of energy doctrine stated that there “The last several years have seen a dramatic is a constant amount of available energy. No new increase of books and articles published on body ori- energy is created and none is destroyed nor disap- ented psychotherapy and subjects related to the con- pears. Helmholtz’s doctrine led to the popularization nection of the mind and body. No longer considered of such concepts as force, energy, power, action, the province of adventurous intellectuals, rebellious impulse, impetus, and stress. All of these concepts nonconformists, or crackpots, the mind-body connec- emerged in one form or another as parts of major psy- tion has become a respectable subject. What at one chological theories, including psychoanalytic psy- time could only be found in the dusty back shelves of chology. For example, Freud believed that a finite second hand bookstores, is now discussed in best sell- amount of energy powers unconscious conflicts. If ers cataloged under “mind and body.” No less than the the energy is blocked, it will somehow find a release.

JISHIM 2002, 2 31 Jacqueline A. CARLETON BODY, SELF AND SOUL: THE EVOLUTION OF A WHOLISTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY In this way, Freud viewed the psyche through the lens was the great dancer, choreographer, and theorist, of physics and the conservation of energy.” Rudolph Laban, whose work forms a cornerstone of dance therapy. Reich began his medical training dur- “Freud was so steeped in Helmholtzian thinking ing the tail end of this ferment, and his work reflects that his first attempt to formulate a theory of mental the struggle to meld rationalist mechanism and vital- functioning was cast in the language of classical ism. Before Reich, there was no body psychotherapy mechanics. Freud’s Project for a Scientific Psychology as it would be defined today, but the connection that states: “The intention is to furnish a psychology that Freud made between the body and the mind cannot shall be a natural science: that is, to represent psychi- be underestimated.” cal processes as quantitatively determinate states of specifiable material particles, thus making those “Freud began his investigations into the psyche processes perspicuous and free from contradiction stimulated by his interest in conversion hysteria. By (Freud, 1895, p. 295).” Similarly Helmholtzian, Freud seeing physical symptoms such as hysterical deafness reduced psychological phenomena to physical princi- and hysterical paralysis as signs of disturbances in the ples and one motivational drive, for example, libidinal psyche, rather than malingering, Freud was in a way energies emerging from an instinctual id.” one of the first body psychotherapists. He understood that there was a connection between body and mind. “However, the classical mechanics of nineteenth It was Freud who stated in The Ego and the Id, “The century science did not go unchallenged. Freud's ego is first and foremost a body-ego,” contending that psychoanalytic theory, being similarly basically our first sense of self is as an embodied self. reductionistic, faced the same criticism pointed at the work of the Helmholtz School as being too However, this aspect of his work has been mechanistic, too materialistic, and too base. As D.H. obscured because Freud chose to remain within the Lawrence fulminated in Fantasia of the confines of the psyche to affect the body, and not the Unconscious, “The scientist wants to discover a reverse, by pursuing the “talking cure.” The talking cause for everything (p. 61).” The people who ques- cure occurred when the patient recalled past events, tioned it came from a strong philosophical tradition especially events that occurred when the symptom(s) that contrasted with rationalism. Goethe’s first happened. Other probes into this hidden source Naturalphilosophie in the beginning of the nine- of unconscious motivation were developed, such as teenth century through Henri Bergson’s ideas about recalling slips of the tongue, dreams, or any other “vital force” or elan vital in the late nineteenth and phenomena related to this unconscious world. His early twentieth century formed a smaller, but method then expanded into an elaborate theory of strongly vocal opposition. Both Goethe’s and personality involving a structure: the id, ego, and Bergson’s work questioned the dominance of rea- superego; and a function: repression, transference, son, instead emphasizing the intuitive and the expe- projection and the various complexes.” riential. According to Goethe, “Naturalphilosophie saw both man and the universe as organisms, ulti- Reich mately consisting of forces, of activities, of cre- “Wilhelm Reich encountered the work of Freud in ations, of emergings - organized in basic eternal 1919 through a seminar in medical school. Reich’s conflicts, in polarity (Sharaf, 1994, 55).” The rise in the new psychoanalytic world was nothing less echoes of vitalism are heard in these words, which than meteoric. Within one year, “Freud permitted the in the latter twentieth century reverberated in the young medical student to start seeing analytic emergence of humanistic psychology.” patients and referred several cases to him (Sharaf, 1994, 58).” A health movement interested in natural sources of healing, such as water, heat, light, and touch, also “Reich plunged into psychoanalysis, regarding it flourished during the turn of the century. Artists such as pure knowledge to be furthered. In the typical as D.H. Lawrence, and Herman Hesse were in con- innocence of a young knight, he did not see the tan- tact and strongly influenced by this movement. So gle of politics and emotional investments growing

32 JISHIM 2002, 2 BODY, SELF AND SOUL: Jacqueline A. CARLETON THE EVOLUTION OF A WHOLISTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY quickly in the psychoanalytic world and around the domination of women, allowing sexual relations Freud. Nor did he see the effects on others of his own between adolescents, affirming sexuality in children, extremely complicated personality. By 1922, Reich sex education, abortion and birth control. suggested the formation of a technical seminar for Psychoanalysis in post-Victorian Vienna was still on younger analysts in which an open examination of the fringe and had been under attack since its incep- analytic failures would be possible. Reich led this tion for its concentration on sexuality. The early seminar from 1924 to 1930, and during this time he Freudians were quite sensitive to their public image began to formulate his concept of . and were still trying to legitimize their work as a sci- It was this work on character that would survive in ence. Reich, with his strong personality and views, the more orthodox psychoanalytic world even after must have been seen as waving a red flag, directing his many exiles and expulsions. It was also through the forces of opposition right to their door.” Reich’s work on character that he began to under- “By 1933, Reich was in trouble everywhere and stand the importance of the body in psychoanalytic with everyone. The Communists rejected Reich on work. Initially, Reich was interested in resistance on the grounds that he was too Freudian. The Freudians the part of the patient as the reason psychoanalytic thought he was a Communist. The rising Nazis saw interpretation failed. His search for a way to system- him as an enemy. This began Reich’s series of atically work with resistance led him to notice the exiles.” importance of nonverbal, as well as verbal, work. Reich was convinced that for analysis to be success- “By 1934, Reich’s link with the Psychoanalytic ful, memory had to be accompanied by an emotional Association was in great jeopardy. Besides rousing release. The talking cure alone was not enough. the hostility of his colleagues with his political activ- Reich observed that his patients used manner, pos- ities, Reich’s progress in psychoanalytic work had ture, even dress to block affect. Progressively, brought him into direct opposition to the Master. In through his clinical work, Reich observed what he the 1920's, Freud posited the death instinct as an called “character armor -- the automaton quality of answer to the persistence of negative psychodynam- patients, their lack of spontaneous feeling.” ics, particularly in masochism. By 1932, Reich was ready to challenge his mentor and published a case “Initially, Reich’s work on character analysis was dealing with masochism that questioned the death well received with few criticisms. However, Reich’s instinct. Not only did this case fracture the schism simultaneous work on sexuality and his involvement between Freud and Reich beyond repair, it was the in the turbulent political situation in Vienna in the first published case in which Reich actively worked at late 1920's would eventually draw heavy fire from his a body level. Noticing some spontaneous kicking by psychoanalytic colleagues and finally Freud himself. his patient, Reich had the choice of asking his patient His search for scientific discovery and subsequent to verbalize his emotions or encourage more kicking. attempts at repression of his ideas by organizations He chose the latter, with the result that the kicking led and governments became the leitmotif of Reich’s life. his patient to discover joy in provoking his parents. This theme played through to his death.” Reich also began physically mirroring his patient’s “Reich began his investigations into sexuality attitudes to give him an idea of the outer expressions with the intention of extending Freud’s idea that a of his inner states. Reich noticed that his patient’s good sexual life was a foundation of psychological desire for pain was not a desire for pain per se, as health. As early as 1923, Reich was developing his Freud would have interpreted. His patient had a deep theories on genitality and the role of sexual energy in fear of being alone and was so armored that he could neurosis.” not feel contact. Only by abrasion of his skin and pain could he feel any warmth. The pain itself was not the “By 1929, Reich was establishing sexual hygiene goal, but the feeling of warmth at the skin level.” clinics through the Socialists. Reich advocated many issues that reappeared in the sexual revolution of the “Involving the body specifically, Reich first noted 1960's and 70's: questioning traditional marriage and in this case not only a psychic rigidity, but a physical

JISHIM 2002, 2 33 Jacqueline A. CARLETON BODY, SELF AND SOUL: THE EVOLUTION OF A WHOLISTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY rigidity as well, particularly in the musculature of the clients to break up what he saw as the armoring in pelvis. The case was published in the International their bodies.” Journal of Psychoanalysis, but with a note from Freud “This touch was different from massage, very warning readers that Reich was a Communist. By pointed, affectively neutral and almost medical.” The 1934, he was excluded from the rolls of the German touch was directed toward emotional release and was Psychoanalytic Society at its Congress at Lucerne, deep and hard. Reich tended to stay away from soft- Switzerland. Although he attended the Congress, it er touch, which he felt might be interpreted as seduc- was as a guest speaker. His paper was on “Psychic tive. He began to observe the role of respiration with Contact and Vegetative Current.” In it, he began his regard to emotion, the observation of the patient’s discussion of vegetative energy that would lead to his respiration becoming almost the “free association” of theories later. With Reich’s discussion of the his therapy. Always looking for the underlying sys- vegetative current and the ability or inability of tem, Reich began to formulate his theory of muscular patients to make emotional contact with themselves segments, how chronic bands of tension in different and others, we see both Helmholtz’s mechanics and segments with the body related to blocked affect and Bergson’s vitalist ideas emerge in Reich’s work.” memory and how the muscular segments interrelated “Reich’s ideas often appear to be unmothered, to each other and with behavior to form an exquisite- springing forth like Athena from the head of Zeus. ly complex defense network. From his experiments However, Reich was not completely alone in his with natural science, Reich also began to regard the study of body and psyche. George Groddeck (1866- body in Helmholtzian terms of pulses and flows of 1934), who joined the psychoanalytic movement in energy, expansions and contractions.” 1917 and is referred to as the “father of psychosomat- “To place Reich in a historical context, Reich’s ic medicine,” preceded Reich in taking a psy- work, like Freud’s, showed evidence of the Helmholtz chophysical approach when he treated isolated pat- School influence. For example, Reich’s concept of terns of chronic tension as psychosomatic symptoms. energetics based on the charge-discharge model is dis- Ernst Kretschmer (1888-1964), a psychiatrist, corre- tinctly mechanistic and reflects Helmholtz’s conser- lated body types with personality characteristics, pre- vation of energy doctrine. His later efforts to tie his ceding Reich’s work on character structure. Reich ideas to an identifiable, quantitative energetic force likely knew of Kretschmer’s ideas through a supervi- that permeated the universe called orgone energy sor, Paul Schilder, who was an admirer of would be perfectly at home with the unity of science Kretschmer (Downing, 1980). Closer to home, the movement by linking physics and psychology. Yet at woman whom Reich was with during his time in the same time, Reich’s orgone energy also smacks of Oslo, Elsa Lindenberg, was a dancer. She had worked vitalism by being a universal energy that animates closely with Rudolph Laban. Laban (1879-1958), in human life, thinking, and feeling. William James, one addition to his work in dance notation, movement of the first great American psychologists, referred to choruses, and other innovations, had developed a that which emphasizes scientific determinism and the form of analysis called effort-shape work. This analy- importance of matter as “tough-minded,” being more sis included movement in time and space and looked materialistic, sensationistic, and experimentally rigor- at emotion within gesture. Lindenberg had also stud- ous. On the other hand, James said “tender-minded” ied with Elsa Gindler in Germany. Gindler (1885- psychology, being more humanistic and person orient- 1961) was the teacher of Charlotte Selver, who devel- ed, stresses free will, self determination, and the oped Sensory Awareness. Selver’s work would later importance of mind (James, 1907). The struggle blend somatic therapies and body in between two opposing points of view in explaining the late 1960's and early 1970's. To what extent human behavior has been going on for centuries. Lindeberg might have influenced Reich’s theories Plato, for example, called scientific thought, i.e., log- and work, we do not know. However, it was during ical thought based on premises, “understanding,” and this time with her, that his work with the body truly called philosophical thought, i.e., insightful and developed. Reich had begun to use touch with his immediate apprehension, “intellectual” (Fuller, 1931).

34 JISHIM 2002, 2 BODY, SELF AND SOUL: Jacqueline A. CARLETON THE EVOLUTION OF A WHOLISTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY The struggle plays out as determinism versus free body psychotherapy. The visits of Lowen, Pierrakos will, mechanism versus vitalism, materialism versus and their trainers spread Bioenergetics over most of idealism, environment versus organism, and causation Europe. Later, and separately, Pierrakos’ Core versus teleology (Watson, 1967). Without the “tender- Energetics would take a foothold. Al Pesso brought minded” side to Reich’s body of work, body psy- Psychomotor work to Europe, establishing a strong chotherapy may have never progressed beyond being base in Holland. The Browns began trainings in an offshoot of psychoanalytic psychology.” Switzerland, Germany, Scandinavia, and Italy. Reflecting how strongly the Americans were influ- After Reich encing humanistic and body psychotherapy in “With the emergence of humanistic psychology, Europe, a comic article was published in the late along with a push from the Human Potential 1980's in a New Age magazine in Zurich entitled, Movement, the pendulum began to swing back to “How to be a Successful Psychotherapist.” The first “tender-minded” psychology and away from the recommendation was, “Have an American name or “tough-minded” side that had ascended in the mid- something close to it.” 1800's. The humanistic point of view is to a degree a “Perhaps had the most sweeping continuation of the vitalism movement that was outlook on the role of body psychotherapy in the almost discarded in the nineteenth century. Both hold future. He believed it would accompany the inex- that explanations of human behavior require human orable evolution of consciousness. He said, “Life is concepts, not explanation by analogy from animal now spinning at a tremendous rate. The elements that behavior. Vitalism relates well to the psychology of are not in truth are breaking down. This releases the becoming (a cornerstone of humanistic psychology) dead energies of life. There is confrontation with in that there is within each person a vital force for these dead energies and a release. It is a great time of growth and development. The humanistic notion that transformation. We are in a crucible. This time is humans have an inner direction is also akin to vital- bringing invisible and deep connections.” ism. Examples of this inner force are the humanistic “In summary and returning to the historical per- beliefs that human phenomena involve a life seeking spective, body psychotherapy is unusual in the world and life propelling drive, and within each individual of psychology in that it embraces two of the three dwells a tendency to seek, to strive, to preserve that core ideas in psychology -- perception, motivation, which is basically human.” and learning -- while most areas encompass one. “The kernel idea of humanistic psychology is that Perception, which is linked to body psychotherapy humans are purposive organisms. Many body psy- via humanistic psychology, which in turn is linked to chotherapists espouse values that stem from humanis- phenomenological and existential psychology, and tic psychology. For example, a de-emphasis on diag- the Gestalt philosophers, is one. Motivation, which is nosis in the fashion of the biomedical model is drawn linked to body psychotherapy via psychoanalytic from the idea that abstractions are unnecessary. The psychology, is the other. In the voices of body psy- goal of growth comes from the idea that each person chotherapists like , John Pierrakos, possesses a growth potential that stimulates one to Charles Kelley, Malcolm and Katherine Brown, Ilana realize and to develop into whatever and whomever Rubenfeld, Ron Kurtz, Al Pesso and Diane Boyden, they are to become. Cultivating spontaneity and the and David Boadella we hear echoes of earlier voices use of imagination derives from the idea that people . . . Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, , Fritz are basically spontaneous (DeCarvalho, 1991).” Perls, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, F.M. “The early 1970's saw interesting developments Alexander, Moishe Feldenkrais, Kurt Goldstein, and concerning body psychotherapy in Europe. While many others.” there had been a small, but growing, Reichian tradi- “Learning, which was primarily associated in the tion all along, Americans with new innovations and first part of the twentieth century with behaviorism theories came to Europe to reseed and popularize and experimental psychology (Bormann, 1980,7) and

JISHIM 2002, 2 35 Jacqueline A. CARLETON BODY, SELF AND SOUL: THE EVOLUTION OF A WHOLISTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY more recently with cognitive theory, until recently has Core Energetics is a deep, powerful therapeutic not had as much affinity for body psychotherapy.” process seeking to integrate the mind, body, emo- tions, will and spirit in the service of the love and “Cognitive theory stresses learning occurs as a result of internal mental processes. That is, cognitive pleasure that are the essence of life. When fear, anger, research seeks to describe the role of the person’s hatred, etc., is stored in the body’s tissues, physical own mental activity in learning and remembering and mental health may be threatened. Work with the (Schwartz and Reiberg, 1991, 2). This perspective body facilitates the release of emotional blocks, views people as problem solvers who actively use defensive postures, and destructive belief systems, so information from the world around them to master that the energies of the body can flow more freely, their environment (Solomon, 1992, 105). This broad- creating greater life fulfillment for the individual. er perspective regarding people opened learning the- Persons can be helped to transform these obstacles ory to humanistic concepts, one of the threads of which block contact with the core, the source of all body psychotherapy ideas. Cognitive theory’s influ- healing, wisdom, joy and creativity. The therapist ence also has made learning theory and body psy- provides a supportive environment in which the chotherapy more accessible to each other by empha- client can access deep inner processes, reach cathar- sizing events that take place inside the learner.” sis or containment, and release blocked energy in the body. Although aware of the client’s character “The strong interest shown at USABP national defenses and destructive life patterns, the therapist conferences in the early child development research focuses on the core of the person: his/her spiritual of Allan Schore, Catherine Weinberg, and Ed Tronic capacity, ability to love, and life task. reflects an emerging compatibility between the ideas represented by these researchers and those central to The therapeutic work of this process is based on body psychotherapy that may be one of the first gird- the principle elucidated by Wilhelm Reich: that we ers in a bridge between body psychotherapy and the are a psychosomatic unity which has within it the third core idea of psychology. Perhaps the story of the capacity to love and heal, and that we have an inner body psychotherapy of the twenty-first century will impetus toward creative evolution. In order to evolve, be the evolution of an integrative body psychotherapy we must deeply transform the negative aspects of our that intertwines perception, motivation, and learning.” personality, releasing their energy into growth and creativity. The physical body is the vehicle through Core energetics as an example of a which we express our emotions, thoughts and spiritu- psychotherapy embodying al selves. By working with the body to help confront mind, and spirit the defensive reactions of our emotions, we open up the way to healing and evolution. The art and science of body psychotherapy: We can envision ourselves as made up of layers of a personal perspective energy. At our center is the pulsating, moving energy Body psychotherapy, in a historical perspective, of life. This is our life force which, following the laws has been accomplished through ritual, religion, of physics (and of biological development) seeks to drama, and storytelling since the earliest times of expand and grow. Our core is our connection to our which we have any knowledge. Psychotherapy, spiritual nature and to the universe. The next layer viewed as the journey of a soul, is simply a continu- (called simply the secondary layer by Reich) is the ation of a mythic, dramaturgical . This is the journey lower self, which contains our wounds and the dark or of the author of the ODYSSEY, Cervantes in DON shadow side of our nature. Our life force is blocked QUIXOTE, Dante in THE DIVINE COMEDY, when we are not allowed to express who we really Milton in PARADISE LOST, to name only a few of are, especially our emotional pain or negative emo- the best known.. By daring to eat of the fruit of the tions. This energy, stagnating, produces a layer of tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve defenses which become the physical and charactero- were expelled from Paradise and began the human logical armoring. On top of this we position a social journey. We are HOMOSAPIENS. mask, designed to protect ourselves and others from

36 JISHIM 2002, 2 BODY, SELF AND SOUL: Jacqueline A. CARLETON THE EVOLUTION OF A WHOLISTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY our lower self. Both the armoring and social mask are the core of our being into creative expression in the roughly equivalent to Winnicott’s “false self.” But, world. The more pain a child experiences, the more this mask or false self unfortunately also dampens the extreme are the measures to protect the integrity of the vibrancy and buoyancy of the life center, the core. self and to diminish or block the pain. The modes of protecting ourselves become patterns of holding the Technique physical energy. This creates blocks in the physical Character defenses (coping mechanisms from body. For example unconscious fear can be kept at childhood that are overused or inappropriate in adult- bay by held breath and raised shoulders. If this hap- hood) are treated by charging segments of the body pens enough times, a person develops permanent where energy is absent or discharging segments of the holding patterns which are present in the body and can body where energy is blocked. Repressed emotions, be seen and worked with by the therapist. These memories and belief systems are retrieved by freeing blocks tell the therapist where and how to proceed. muscular and organ contractions. The therapist may The model of energy and consciousness which is place the client in stress positions, initiate grounding the foundation for this therapy stresses the relation- exercises, introduce deep breathing, or work with the ship between the five levels of existence: the physi- body on the couch or roller. The therapist may use her cal body, the feelings and emotions, the mind and hands to assist this process by working on the client’s thoughts, the will and the spirit or soul. Unification physical/energetic blocks. When touch is involved in and integration of the whole entity is the goal. the session, it may be hard or soft depending on the The therapeutic work is based on three principles: type of resistance in the musculature and the charac- ter defense of the client. Touch must be approached 1. The person is a psychosomatic-spiritual unity; with caution and respect for the meaning it holds for 2. The source of healing and the capacity to love the client. For many people defenses must be built and is within the self. structures erected. Emotions need to be contained and 3. All of existence forms a unity that moves channeled rather than expressed. toward a creative evolution. In the human entity, this In addition, the therapist works with destructive evolution consists of the deep transformation of neg- aspects of the personality by helping the person pen- ative aspects of the personality into a creative whole. etrate the ego-mask, the idealized self-image or the Energy is a living force that emanates from each false self in order to meet and release the frozen neg- level of consciousness. It is characterized by pulsa- ativity hidden beneath it. By bringing this suppressed tion, motility, rhythm, abundance, flexibility and material to consciousness, energy is released, and the malleability. Human consciousness uses energy to client connects with a full and vibrant life force. sculpt the shape of the body and determine the basic form of existence. The physical body is the laborato- Theory ry of life and the vehicle through which emotions, Energy and consciousness are the two dimensions thoughts, and the spiritual self are expressed. of the life force which operate at all levels of the per- sonal reality. Consciousness shapes and directs our Conclusion energy. It is limitless, especially when expressed I have endeavored in this brief summary of the through our spiritual aspect, through love. The deep history of body and energy psychotherapy to illus- physical work expands the energy field and thereby trate the emergence first of psychoanalysis and then the consciousness. Just as energy and matter are of body and energy psychotherapy as a subset of interchangeable, or perhaps the same thing, so ener- trends in the larger medical and scientific communi- gy and consciousness form a unity. ty. Freud’s startling models of the psyche, based on When negative or painful experiences occur, we Newtonian physics and his training in neurophysiol- create energy blocks in order to survive. But, these ogy, evolved and stimulated the work of Wilhelm safety maneuvers block the movement of energy from Reich, one of his most brilliant students to carry his

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