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.

Read more about this topic:  Body Psychotherapy

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!
    Camille Paglia (b. 1947)

    In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.
    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)