Alexander Lowen, a lawer, went in 1940 to lectures of Wilhelm Reich, a psychoanalyst from Vienna, who came to the United States. Lowen was aware that sports give him a good feeling about himself and Reich was lecturing about body movement more profoundly. He gets inpspired and did training by Reich. His first session he described in his book "Bioenergetics".

"My fist therapeutic session with Reich was an experience I will never forget. I went with the naïve assumption that there was nothing wrong with me. It was purely a training analysis. I lay down on the bed wearing a pair of bathing trunks. Reich did not use a couch since this was a body-oriented therapy. I was told to bend my knees, relax and breathe with my mouth open and my jaw relaxed. I followed these instructions and waited to see what would happen. After some time Reich sad:"Lowen, you're not breathing" I answered, of course I'm breathing; otherwise I'd be dead".He then remarked,"Your chest isn't moving, feel my chest." I placed my hand on his chest and noticed that it was rinsing and falling with each breath, mine clearly was not.

I lay back again and resumed breathing, this time with my chest moving outward on inspiration and inward on expiration. Nothing happened. My breathing proceeded easily and deeply. After a while Reich said"drop your head back and open your eyes wid."I did as I was told and ... a scream burst from my throat.

It was a beatiful day in early spring, and the windows of the room opened onto the street. To avoid any embarrassment with his neighbours, Dr. Reich asked me to straighten my head, which stopped the scream I resumed my deep breathing, strangely, the scream had no disturbed me, I was not connected to it emotionally. I did not feel any fear. After I had breathed again for a while, Dr. Reich asked me to repeat the procedure: put my head back and open my eyes wide. Again the scream came out. I hesitate to say that I screamed because I did not seem to do it. The scream happened to me. Again I was detached from it, but I left the session with the feeling that I was not as all right as I thought. There were "things"( images, emotions) in my personality that were hidden from consciousness, and I knew that they would have to come out."

Lowen was so inpsired by this work that he decided to study medicine and become a psychiatrist. He develped the work of Reich to what now is Bioenergetic Analysis. By clinical observation he came to the conclusion that certain musclular patterns connect with the childhood periode where the inhibition occured. He could by this distinguish different character patterns.