Shadows in the History of Body Psychotherapy: Part Ii Courtenay

SHADOWS IN THE HISTORY I (no hero here) will not save you, only say i go ahead, die Shadows in the History of Body Psychotherapy: Part I (at least a little) Courtenay Young and Gill Westland Do It See Received 4 April 2013, accepted June 2013 What happens. Friend, the howl in your bones? I have it too. Abstract Play me a song on that little flute This article is intended to open up a discussion and to begin to name, reflect on, and I will make a small harmony so that gradually start healing some of the wounds that arose throughout the development of body we can plant trees of forgiveness psychotherapy, particularly during the 1960-2000 period.ii It highlights several problems in lands of milk and honey inherent in individuals single-handedly pioneering new methods, and several systemic Together difficulties in the organization of the original training courses. These Shadows are not unique THE ART AND SCIENCE OF SOMATIC PRAXIS THE ART AND SCIENCE OF SOMATIC PRAXIS whistling, to body psychotherapy and similar examples of such issues can be found in many other walking home. modalities of psychotherapy and in many other communities. They have implications for the wider professional field and also the future development of the field of body psychotherapy that, once named and owned, can be utilized more positively. Because of its length, the article BIOGRAPHY has been split into 2 parts. Part II will be published in Volume 13, Number 2, fall. Jeanne Denney is a psychotherapist, healer, teacher and death (and life) educator who maintains a private practice in somatic psychology and energetic bodywork in Haverstraw, Keywords: body psychotherapy, shadow, history, abuse, healing, ethics NY, and New York City. She has been a teacher and mentor at Ramapo College of New Jersey, The Institute for Transpersonal Psychology (Now Sophia University). She currently International Body Psychotherapy Journal The Art and Science of Somatic Praxis leads workshops and teaches at Nyack Living Core Program (Core Energetics). She has spent Volume 13, Number 1, spring 2014 ISSN 2169-4745 Printing, ISSN 2168-1279 Online © Author and USABP/EABP. Reprints and permissions [email protected] years as a doula for death and birth and has raised four children. Website: http://jeannedenney.com/ Introduction Acknowledging the Shadow Individuals, organisations, countries, and, of course, the profession of body psychotherapy, all carry their Shadow aspects. Jung saw the Shadow as a merging of unconscious personal INTERNATIONAL BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY JOURNAL PSYCHOTHERAPY BODY INTERNATIONAL elements with various archetypal contents of the collective unconscious. The Shadow also JOURNAL PSYCHOTHERAPY BODY INTERNATIONAL contains the repressed parts of ourselves that we cannot accept and “the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is” (as cited in Samuels, Shorter & Plaut, 1986, p. 138). The Shadow can further contain elements that have not yet emerged into consciousness and thus this part can only be inferred, often in the form of unconscious or subconscious projections. These projections can become stronger and more irrational, individually and collectively, as the contents of the Shadow move towards consciousness. The Shadow cannot be eradicated, but it is possible to learn to live with it, and even use it constructively (Samuels, Shorter & Plaut, 1986). The Shadow and its corollary, the Light, in Jung’s terminology, both have dangerous and constructive characteristics. Only when we “own” the good and bad aspects (of each) can we move beyond these polarities into a more integrated Self. While I use the terminology of the Shadow, I also indicate a process towards higher levels of consciousness (viz., Thich Nhat Hahn’s poem, “Call Me By My True Names”iii). Jung also believed that, “in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness — or perhaps because of this — the shadow is the seat of creativity” so that for some, it may be that “the dark side of his being, his sinister shadow... represents the true spirit of life, as against the 12 13 COURTENAY YOUNG AND GILL WESTLAND SHADOWS IN THE HISTORY arid scholar” (Jung, 1983, p. 262). Since the emergence of psychoanalysis, there has been a: Anna Freud (who chaired the committee that expelled him), later acknowledged that his …vast outpouring of research, speculation, theorising, analysis, and controversy, expulsion was “unjust” (Boadella, 1973, p. 114). One result of this is that, for psychoanalysis, resulting in a broad spectrum of schools and movements, all holding high the banners the body became part of its Shadow side. Again, I reiterate, the Shadow is only negative when of their own truths and hostile to others (Jacoby, 1990, p. ix). denied or rejected; it becomes more positive and useful when owned and accepted. This denial is also a large part of our psychotherapeutic philosophy, and can be found in several The Founding Fathers of Body Psychotherapy religions as well. Reich then became a refugee, first to Denmark, then to Sweden (each on a visitor’s visa Pierre Janet for six months), and then to Norway, and finally emigrated to the USA in 1939, a short time Whilst Janet was almost certainly one of the founding fathers of body psychotherapy before the Second World War, where he came under surveillance by the FBI (Bennett, 2010, (Boadella, 1997: Janet, 1925; Kimble & Wertheimer, 1998), being an elder established pupil 2014; FBI, 1999; Turner, 2011). He eventually died in prison in 1957. It seems, from the of Charcot’s, and a contemporary of Freud’s during Freud’s 3-month study visit to Paris, it accounts of the newspaper campaigns against him and the investigations by the FBI and the is somewhat remarkable that Janet had very little influence on the subsequent development Food & Drug Administration (FDA), who eventually took him to court, that he carried a THE ART AND SCIENCE OF SOMATIC PRAXIS THE ART AND SCIENCE OF SOMATIC PRAXIS of body psychotherapy. His work has only relatively recently been re-discovered by body large part of his Shadow with him. To an extent, he became his own worst enemy as he sowed, psychotherapists, and so the impact of his Shadow on it has been relatively benign or obscure like Oedipus, the seeds of his own downfall. His books were burnt in both Nazi Germany (except, perhaps, in the refusal or disdain of other continental body psychotherapists to and the USA in the 1950s (Young, 2006b, 2008, 2010) and body psychotherapy, such as publish widely in English). it was then, had to distance itself from him, evidenced especially by Lowen (1958) hardly mentioning him in his first book,The Language of the Body. Later, his work was recognised Freud and revived, and became influential within humanistic psychology (Clarkson, 1994). Body Those familiar with the history of body psychotherapy (Young, 2006b, 2011) will also psychotherapy then re-recognised him in the 1970s, significantly with the publication of be aware that, whilst Freud originally acknowledged the importance of the body within Boadella’s books (1973, 1976) and his journal, Energy & Character. psychotherapy, he later came to reject it, and eventually excluded those colleagues who Reich’s life had had several severe traumatic experiences in it, some with a distinct sexual supported it, such as Reich and Fenichel (Heller, 2012), both of whom supported a bodily Shadow. He himself wrote of his early childhood sexual experiences (Reich, 1988) with a oriented way of working. Freud had also previously rejected the totality of Pierre Janet’s sense of self-agency, and Sharaf claimed (in a keynote lecture at the European Association work; and, with all these exclusions and later denials (including Jung and others), Freud then for Body Psychotherapy conference, Vienna/Pamhagen, 1997) that Reich was probably started to cast something of his own Shadow especially with respect to the body. sexually abused as a child, though this point is less clear in his book (Sharaf, 1983). There Furthermore, at first he believed his patients who had reported sexual abuse, but later were definitely huge issues with his mother as well as subsequent female partners and wives on, he revised his thinking and saw these reports instead as normal childhood longings that indicated he had not resolved any of these issues; and there were less obvious issues and fantasy, developing a whole (Oedipal) theory to support this essential denial. When regarding ‘father-figures’ as well. Reich was certainly an iconic and controversial figure and Masson (1985) revisited this territory, using the Freud archives, he postulated that Freud had it is therefore quite hard to come to any sort of balanced view about him. Many people covered up actual sexual abuse and was not surprisingly met with considerable criticism from have claimed that his work supported this, or that, films have been made, and his work has iv INTERNATIONAL BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY JOURNAL PSYCHOTHERAPY BODY INTERNATIONAL supporters of Freud, who did not like the small boy saying, “The Emperor has no clothes.” become the subject of pop songs, all of which he probably would never have condoned. JOURNAL PSYCHOTHERAPY BODY INTERNATIONAL We have recently been presented with a further theory that Freud was an unacknowledged It is very easy to get attached to one or more of the many facets of this iconic character, cocaine addict (Cohen, 2011) and that possibly a substantial part of The Interpretation of and thus hail him as a genius; it is equally easy to dismiss him out of hand. Both of these Dreams was influenced by this. are aspects of the human Shadow that he graphically illustrated so well in Listen, Little Man Finally, there is reasonably strong evidence that, within psychoanalytical circles, there was (Reich, 1948/1972).

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