Body Psychotherapy - History

History

Body work has always had a somewhat marginal position within the psychotherapies - something perhaps not unconnected with the tendency for charismatic leaders to emerge within it, from Reich onwards. Object relations theory has arguably opened the way more recently for a fuller consideration of the body-mind in psychotherapy.

Reich's work on the segmented nature of the body armour - "The muscular armour has a segmented arrangement...always transverse to the torso, never along it", he proclaimed - was extended by Alexander Lowen in his Bioenergetic analysis and by John Pierrakos in Core energetics. Lowen claimed that "No words are so clear as the language of body expression".

Subsequently the Chiron approach added influences from Gestalt therapy.

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