Gabriella Buti Zaccagnini
Abstract:
Thanks to A. Lowen’s insight, Bioenergetic Analysis has placed
the Body Self at the centre of the therapeutic process, highlighting its relational
aspect.
The affective states are the essences of the Bioenergetic experience with
the emotive-bodily quality that characterises them and draws distinctions
between them. Fully communicating with the affective “here and now” state
is the first step that Bioenergetic Analysis proposes. The objective is the
growth of the “person system”, improving its functionality in relation to
the environment, which takes place together with the reorganisation of the
Body Self.
Today, these qualities and modalities, present from the outset of clinical
experience in Bioenergetic Analysis, place it in the mainstream of the evolution
of the psychoanalytic disciplines, naturally attuned to the most recent results
produced in the “infant research”, and enable it to offer useful and clinically
thoroughly tested instruments as its original contribution to the on-going
debate among the various schools.
Some Developmental Aspects of Body and Identity.
Analytic-Imaginary Body Psychotherapy.
Jörg Clauer
Abstract:
My work offers a special
kind of supportive contact that allows the body to give in and especially
to trust the weight of one’s bones to the therapist. Clients can learn to
confide in a therapist who does not demand anything. At the same time, the
trust in the process and in their own arising emotions and body reactions
is allowed to grow to the extent that the therapist is familiar with his own
awareness, his arising emotions and body reactions. These reactions of the
therapist mainly originate from transference; perceiving and using them can
be very helpful in the therapeutic process. In this way, a deep grounding
can develop and help the clients to rely on their own organismic existence,
i.e. on the right of being and on being at ease with their own feelings/emotions
and their own joy of living. Based on this contact, the client’s inner child
has a nourishing foundation for further growth, self-development and self-experience
in the process of therapy and life.
On the metapsychological level, the work creates an opportunity to get into
contact with and to develop the core-body self and the subjective self according
to Stern (1992). Starting from a reliable experience of the core-self and
the subjective self, normally fantasies and symbols arise, like in the development
of children.
Finally, this offers a way to integrate the intersubjectivity of the human
relationship into the outer world of speech, i.e. living in this world with
a communicating, well-grounded self that enjoys life.
The Importance of Relationships in Bioenergetic Analysis.
Robert Hilton
Abstract:
This paper begins with the tragic story of a 7-year-old girl. As her mother and three therapists attempted the use of a radical "rebirthing" technique with her, she was suffocated and died. The mother and therapists were "well meaning”. The problem was they were so concerned about being right or being loved by this little girl that they missed who she was and the depth of her trauma. This article invites us to look again at the motivations we have in doing therapy in general and body-oriented therapy in particular. It emphasises the critical importance of the relationship in all therapeutic interactions.
The Importance of Bioenergetic Contact in the Mother-Infant Relationship
for Prevention of Pathology and Promotion of Health.
Silja Wendelstadt
Abstract:
The article bases on
W. Reich’s understanding of what a healthy newborn is and the functioning
of its creative energy-system that, out of its own resources, will make bioenergetic
contact, (that is the affectionate relationship) with its mother and stimulates
her to respond to its needs. The aim of health education must be to remove
any obstacle in the development of this naturally given productivity of the
biological energy and to prevent armouring, at the beginning of life, through
lively pulsatory contact between newborn and care provider.
Modern newborn research confirms that providing care empathically affects
not only the healthy development of the baby but also the formation of neural
pathways within the brain.
In Italy and Germany centres for Emotional First Aid for parents and babies
in crisis have been set up. The programmes of the centres are based on Wilhelm
Reich’s later work, which has been further developed by his daughter Eva Reich.
Freeing the feelings
by freeing the voice.
Opening the oral segment in body-psychotherapy - after a concept by Kristin
Linklater.
Thea M. Mertz
Abstract:
Subject of this article
is the oral segment with its multitude of functions on primary level (breathing,
eating) and secondary level (voice production, contact). It represents a complex
system with voluntary and involuntary activities.
Because of an intense interplay with the diaphragm, breathing and voice quality
as well as freedom of feelings depend on the openness and flexibility of this
most important control organ of the human body.
The presented working approach provides highly effective tools to liberate
the vocal channel resulting in opening the voice and allowing feelings to
flow undisturbedly.
Unborn Children – Their Traumas and The Consequences.
Geoffrey Whitfield
Abstract:
This contribution is
one that indicates the possibility of one of the real origins of human malfunctioning.
It is considered to lie within the womb experience before the child is born.
During the time of gestation, the unborn child is open without defence to
the emotional life of the mother, for better or for worse.
If a pregnant mother is having emotional flows, then the unborn child is not
protected and thus experiences those emotions, either of great love or the
other extreme, with much in between. When the foetus receives "negative
umbilical effect" from the mother, it experiences serious affliction
without protection and the distress will be utterly severe.
In later life, an intelligent response is to ensure that any such experience
of vulnerability is never repeated. Thus the person will be defensive in many
ways, in order to protect himself.
Secondly he or she will also advance initiatives of behaviour in order to
anticipate future unprotected exposure i.e. the best form of defence is attack.
Hence there is an intelligence, albeit often counter productive, behind aggressive
and bellicose behaviour. Many kinds of power and control seeking behaviours
seek to ensure that the powerlessness within the womb is never repeated.
The consideration of the ramifications of the above may also be of assistance
to therapists as they work closely with the meanings behind resistance.
This paper is intended for the therapist but also for all those engaged in
pre-natal care.
Birth experience is also considered to be important but is not referred to
in this contribution.
C.G. Jung: The body and body-psychoterapy.
Robert C. Ware
Abstract:
Jung wrote in 1939: ”The
unconscious is largely identical with the sympathetic and the parasympathetic
nervous systems, which are the physiological correspondence to the structural
opposition between unconscious contents”. (Jung 1972/73, Briefe, Vol. I, p.
3)
Is this correspondence and widespread identity nothing more than a mechanistic-biologistic
misunderstanding from a time, when the scientific search was for a material
basis of psychic reality? Or can we still today meaningfully join in Jung’s
concern to postulate a fundamental psycho-physical or ”psychoid” (Jung) unity
of spirit and matter, psyche and soma? Freud postulated in 1895 an organic
substratum of the psyche. In recent years the psychoanalytical discussion
of the relationship psyche-soma has reappeared with ever greater actuality.
My own considerations are more clinical and practice-oriented. I shall introduce
them with three concrete examples: “From Dreams to Body-Psychotherapy”. Then
follow some theoretical reflections on “The Psychosomatic Unity of the Bodyself”
in Jungian perspective. I conclude the first part of my paper with a “Criticism
of Jungian Practice”. In Part Two, on the basis of my own experience as a
Jungian and a Bioenergetic Analytical psychotherapist, I propose some “Possibilities
for Body-Psychotherapy’” with respect to body language and body-reading, so-called
“body memories”, touching and movement in therapy.