Embodiment in the Therapeutc Relationship. Boadella, 1.997

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Título: Embodiment in the therapeutic relationship: Main speech at the First Congress of the World... Por: Boadella, David, International Journal of Psychotherapy, 13569082, May97, Vol. 2, Fascículo 1 Base de datos: Academic Search Premier

EMBODIMENT IN THE THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP: MAIN SPEECH AT THE FIRST CONGRESS OF THE WORLD COUNCIL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY, VIENNA, 1-5 JULY 1996

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Abstract The article aims to introduce the rich field of non-verbal communication to psychotherapists of all persuasions, since every client will bring many important messages in this form, and every therapist, consciously or unconsciously, will likewise convey a great deal to his client through somatic signals. A number of key aspects of embodiment are outlined, such as: movement and posture (dating back to Darwin's crucial insights from 1872); rhythms of breathing, which was clearly an important focus for Freud at the outset of psychoanalysis: the somatic aspects of emotional expression, which are seen to be of great importance in modern psychosomatic research and in trauma research; processes of bodily-image, which were studied by pioneers like Pierre Janet and Paul Schilder; and channels of contact including the role of touch in psychotherapy and the importance of para-linguistic signals such as tone of voice and eye contact, which are now seen through infant research, as crucial formative processes in development. Introduction We are celebrating the end of the first century of psychotherapy, but as James Hillman reminds us, the world seems to be getting worse. If we study the history of dynamic psychiatry, as Henry Ellenberger has shown, we find in the early years of psychotherapy a close relationship between the three great domains of body, mind and spirit. The founders of psychotherapeutic understanding in the decades before Freud were attempting to unfold an integrated understanding of the psycho-physical roots of neurosis, and its relationship to the distortions of our human potential, and the ability or not to manifest the qualifies and gifts that we bring with us in incarnation.[1] This integrative understanding, which existed then in embryonic form, was replaced by an increasing divergence between somatic, psychic and spiritual approaches to helping the human being. The body, which became symbolically banned from psychotherapy with the political expulsion of Wilhelm Reich from the psycho-analytic movement at the 13th Psychoanalytic Congress in Lucerne, Switzerland in the year after Hitler came to power, has had 60 years in the cold, treated at best as an `adjunct' to proper psychotherapy, or as an inferior parmer to the processes of symbolic interpretation and problem analysis.[2] This, in spite of the fact that Freud recognised that the ego is first and foremost a body ego, and that psycho-analysis needed to discover its organic foundations. The mind, as a subject for psycho-dynamic insights, cognitive reshaping, or behavioural modification, has been researched with a wealth of methodologies in which clinical objectivity has been increasingly venerated as a sacred cow, in spite of our knowledge that therapeutic interactions are inter-subjective at their core. Political pressures in Europe in recent years have focused more and more narrowly on efficiency testing of psychotherapeutic systems, with the aim of achieving quicker and more cost-effective testing therapeutic short-cuts for the resolving of symptoms. This is in spite of our knowledge that symptoms are only the tip of the iceberg, and reflect an underlying character-disturbance rooted in invasive or depriving relationships, past and present. The opposite politics is being developed by the World Health Organisation, which argues for the importance of `patient education', a new form of developmental learning to put people in touch with inner and outer resources, contact to deeper areas of quality of life, and an understanding of the self-healing potential which lies at the core of each of us, to be drawn out when the field of encouragement is adequate, and when the attunement of the helping other and the holding environment he can offer, are resonant to these deeper levels.[3] Cybernetics and systems theory teach us that to resolve a problem we need to move to a higher level of organisation than the level at which the problem presents. There is a danger as psychotherapists that we become entrapped by the problem: that is what burn-out syndrome is all about, the fatigue created by trying to solve the problem at the level from which it is presented.[4] Moving to a higher level is made difficult by the fear in many psychotherapeutic schools which is shown in regard to the spiritual dimension of life. Otto Rank taught us, nevertheless, that neurosis is at root a loss of connection to our roots, the sense of abandonment in a wasteland without deeper meaning that typifies much of modernist consciousness.[5] If psychotherapy fails to connect adequately to the discovery and development of spiritual dimension of life, the vacuum will be filled by the new-age gum movements and the peddlers of the shallowest forms of superficial esotericism. There is a need, if our profession is to become post-modern and not caught in the reductionisms of the past, that we take seriously the reality of what Winnicott termed the true self. This true self can be seen as the capacity for deep contact, the connection to the voice of the heart, the embodiment of value in daily living, and the sense of meaning and direction in one's life. Neurosis is the loss of contact to such a self. I am using the term embodiment to refer to two processes of linkage which every therapist and every client needs to make, if the reintegration of body, mind and spirit is to become a reality. Francesco Varela, the Nobel prize-winning biologist and cognitive scientist, has called for a `trans formative re-embodiment' of psychotherapy as our most urgent need.[6]` What our clients are needing, the world is needing; the body of the world is crying out for our mindfulness in how we handle it; the soul of the world is calling us to take care of its resources, instead of misusing them in our problem-oriented way, for our own short-term egoistic needs, as the annual `State of the World Forum' has recognised; a forum where spiritual leaders, globally aware politicians, and members of the helping professions are seeking to transcend their specialisms and move towards an integrative vision of a different ground for civilisation in the next century.[7]

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If the somatic, psycho-social and spiritual understanding of human problems is not reintegrated, then body-psychotherapy degenerates to a reductive energetics, where embodied language and the subtle attunements of relationship are neglected the danger then is that patient becomes sub-personalised into a bunch of drives, and tissue states. If the psychological understanding of the person becomes streamlined and over-routinised, the patient becomes impersonalised, as the famous experiment showed in which medical students posed as schizophrenics and were diagnosed as such on their presenting symptoms by the hospital staff, even though the genuine patients, reading body-language more accurately than the experts, were immediately aware of the imposture. If spiritual forms of development are not founded in clear psychodynamic understanding and connected to our bodily ground as breathing, moving, sensuous human beings, then the

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schizophrenics and were diagnosed as such on their presenting symptoms by the hospital staff, even though the genuine patients, reading body-language more accurately than the experts, were immediately aware of the imposture. If spiritual forms of development are not founded in clear psychodynamic understanding and connected to our bodily ground as breathing, moving, sensuous human beings, then the human being is in danger of being de-personalised by a search for some kind of ungrounded new-age consciousness that has lost its organic roots. There are enough examples of this in the proliferation of sects and cults, which fill the vacuum left by psychotherapy, when it does not take up the challenge of moving towards an integrative and multi-dimensional vision and praxis. The form of body-psychotherapy that I have developed over the past quarter of a century is called biosynthesis, which means integration of life. In this formative approach we draw on embryological and morphological insights into the organisation of the energetics and emotionality of the person, and take these as aspects of seven basic dimensions of experience which a comprehensive and holistic psychotherapy seeks to address. We see these dimensions as life-fields of expression. Each of these life-fields has somatic, psychodynamic and spiritual levels of experience. Movement It was Darwin's crucial insight in 1872 that posture, the motoric form of the body, is a modulator of our emotional states[8] Whereas the somatotherapies, such as the work of Feldenkrais and Mathias Alexander, have sought to change posture by manipulation from outside, the psycho-dynamic understanding of movement within body-psychotherapy is based on Darwin's insight and on Wilhelm Reich's discovery of the function of muscular armouring as a binding of emotionality, the holding down of feeling, so that the physical dynamics of our character structure became a fossil record of the past, our frozen history coded in states of tissue tonus. Neuro-physiologically, we know how dependent perception is upon motility, and research into the body image shows a similar dependency. The movements of the body are a source of vitality affect, but are also intrinsic to the expression, or repression, or all other affects. The movement vocabulary of the child, during the first year and a half, is the foundation of his communicative rapport with the world: he interacts by means of motoric and vocal signs long before there is the capacity for the semantic use of language.[9] Every patient brings to the session not only his problems but also his body: he can never leave it behind, even if he forgets it his (as in depersonalisation); or treats it as a mechanical object (as in the schizoid process); or as a source of threat (as in hypochondria). Something like a million items of motoric-semantic information are exchanged in 1 hour of interaction between two persons: the task of the therapist is to understand the psychic and emotional content of this movement language of intentionality. This is what he learns in the course of a minimal 5 years of training. Therapeutic progression can be understood as the conversion of two forms of muscle tone disturbance into the expressive language of the body, shown in the reawakening of motoric aliveness. Undertoned muscles will frequently reveal a history of deprivation and under-stimulation, while over-toned muscles will carry buried shock responses to invasion, or a general stiffening against over-stimulation.[10] As motility is freed, one of the key physiological anchorings of character is loosened, with the result that outer movement expression becomes deeply connected to inner states of feeling: instead of flaccid or spastic states of armouring, the client connects with the gracefulness of movement, and his movement expression unfolds in a direction that can permit what can be called `postures of the soul', that is an organic shape-flow that reveals an essential meaning, an embodied contact to the heart, and a motoric expression symbolising a deep and committed life-direction.[11-15] As a clinical example I recall an episode in the therapeutic work with a woman with a history of abuse from her grandfather. In working with her she got closer to the feelings of rage about this, and began to organise movements in her arms that were pushing the grandfather away. The anger in her arms got weaker the more she extended them, and at the same time any ability to show anger in her voice was blocked by a massive throat contraction. During the course of the session it was discovered that her motoric intentionality was in fact not outwards and forwards, but downwards She was helped to reorganise her posture, following the intention signals in her body, until she was pressing very strongly downwards onto the floor, whilst kneeling on one knee. At this moment all her power was concentrated in this one direction, towards the floor, she became `empowered', and existentially stepped out of the victim identification. She began speaking, as her throat contraction released. The first word she spoke was `I'. She was experiencing a symbolic scene in which she was holding down the lid of the grave of her grandfather, and telling him with full determination `You will never come out of here to persecute me again'. In this posture, with this action, with these words she separated her traumatic past from her present and future. She experienced a flow of strength coming up her back from the base of the spine ('Kreuz' in German), and had a sense of the power in her arms and back as forming an anatomical cross with her heart at the centre. Afterwards she made the statement `I don't have to suffer from this any further'. Breath Early pioneers in body-psychotherapy, such as George Groddeck[17] and Pierre Janet,[18] were aware of the diaphragrnatic block before Breuer and Freud published their first studies of hysteria. Wilhelm Reich described the blockage in respiration as a prime physiological root of every neurotic disturbance.[19] Otto Warburg received the Nobel prize for his discovery of the role of deficient breathing in the generation of cancer states. There are whole World Associations studying the psycho-physiology of anxiety states in connection with hyperventifation.[20] Here is Freud describing his work with his patient Katerina: `I get so out of breath. Not always. But sometimes it catches me so that I think I shall suffocate'. Freud comments: `This did not, at first sight, sound like a nervous symptom. But soon it occurred to me that probably it was only a description that stood for an anxiety attack: she was choosing shortness of breath out of the complex of sensations arising from anxiety and laying undue stress on that single factor'. The conversation between Freud and Katerina goes on as follows: `Sit down here. What is it like when you get "out of breath"?' `It comes over me all at once. First of all it's like something pressing on my eyes. My head gets so heavy, there's a dreadful buzzing, and I feel so giddy that I almost fall over. Then there's something crushing my chest so that I can't get my breath'. `And you don't notice anything in your throat?'

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`My throat's squeezed together as though I were going to choke'.

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`And you don't notice anything in your throat?' `My throat's squeezed together as though I were going to choke'. `Does anything else happen in your head?' `Yes there's a hammering, enough to burst it.' `And don't you feel at all frightened while this is going on?' `I always think I'm going to die. I'm brave as a rule and go about everywhere by myself, into the cellar and all over the mountain. But on a day when that happens I don't dare to go anywhere. I think all the time someone's standing behind me and going to catch hold of me all at once'. (Freud, 1991). Hyperventilation as a physiological process and anxiety with its psycho-dynamic history, reinforce each other. Freud, in this example, correctly asks the patient to become aware of the details of the bodily process that is going on, her contracted embodiment. The traumatic memory locks in the disturbed breathing, and the disturbed breathing locks in the traumatic memory. They are two horns of one dilemma. The body-psychotherapist works directly with how to de-contract the breathing (there are many methods available to help with this) and in parallel is working with the affective release or with new ways of affective appraisal, of the original trauma. My colleague, Andreas Wehowsky, has shown the relationship which can be explored between rhythms of breathing and patterns of bonding. Our object relations are coded in the dynamics of our breath response. If you do not believe this then begin to pay attention to your own breathing patterns in different forms of counter-transference reactions with your clients. Rhythms of breathing modulate all our emotional states, and through therapeutic work helping a client to rebalance his breathing we have a new form of access to the rebalancing of our affective life. Breathing modulates not only energy but also consciousness. A commonly used meditation form is to follow with one's awareness the sensation of the breath as it moves through the body: such a focus on the simple presence of the breath, the rising and falling of the chest and abdomen, the experience of rhythmic expansion and contraction of the body-self, is a deep form of centering. The word `spirit' means breath, and the theme of `inspiration' is not only the physical action of breathing in, but also the spiritual attitude of drawing nourishment from a deeper source than one's self, and a reminder of what has been called our `inter-being' with one another. In working with a hypo-manic patient, who tended to flood into an uncentred storm of feelings, it was very helpful simply to get him to focus attention on the rise and fall of the breathing rhythm in the chest wall. Gradually this patient was able to feel the energetic presence of these rhythms in his body, and became able to select from the whirlpool of feelings what was of more immediate importance to focus on. Such a shift of awareness can be a preparation for a movement of attention from what is exclusively problematic in one's life, towards the resources in one's past, in the here and now, and towards unused potentials in the current environment. In the deepest scenes of horror such a potential may still be present: a 10-year old girl wrote on a postcard before she later died in Dachau: `everyday I look out of the window and I see a tree. That tree reminds me of the meaning of being alive'. Emotionality Our emotional states show a spectrum between highly charged emotional expression, lacking focus in containment (the hysterical problem), and a low charged emotional expression, with fear to express feelings (the schizoid problem). Some people are extremely voluble about feelings but create a cloud of confusion to mask their true emotional state; others suffer from `alexythymia', the difficulty to find words for inner emotional states. Our emotionality is supported by the relative activation or inactivation of the two branches of the vegetive nervous system, the sympathetic preparing for fight or flight, and the parasympathetic, preparing us to relax or resign. All neurotic states can be understood as an imbalance in one of these two directions, as has been shown by all major researchers into the biology of the autonomic nervous system. Health, on the other hand, can be felt as a biological pulsation in which the autonomic system is in good balance. Freud saw the `economic' factor in the neurosis as obstructed libido, the result of this obstruction being understood as `actual angst', a physio-dynamic state of reduced pulsation. This was the historic root of Wilhelm Reich's radical theory of the antithesis of sexuality and anxiety, which he first presented to the psychoanalytic community at the 8th International Congress of Psychoanalysis at Salzburg in 1924, giving many case-examples where psychogenic cardiac heart symptoms could be alleviated if a client could resume a satisfying sexual life.[20] Our clients will show emotional repression or suppression on the one hand, emotional impulsivity on the other hand. Therapeutic work with emotional expressiveness moves be{ween the two poles of containment and release: the client experiences that his emotions can be welcomed and at the same time can be expressed in a constructive rather than a destructive form. From being the victim of his affective states he learns to be the regulator of his emotional process. The therapist works with emotion moving out, that is the connection of emotion to motility.[21] For example, sadness can be transformed through the activity of reaching out, fear states can be alleviated through the activation of long-inhibited impulses to run to a safe place. Emotional expression is not only energetic release, but also inter-subjective communication. We can learn to distinguish three layers in the handling of emotionality: emotion used in the service of defence; the experiencing of the reality and strength of our emotions of rage, despair, terror and pain of loss; and a third layer which moves beyond the storms and expresses a deep joy at the reality of being. This joy can transcend even the fear of death: I have seen it in the face of a woman terminally ill, who had moved beyond the identification with problems and guilts, into self-forgiveness, and into the reality of her contact with an essential level of being not reducible to the life or death of her physical body. Beyond the passions of daily life there lies within us, sometimes within reach and sometimes very hard to reach, but nevertheless within potential reach, such a level of compassion for oneself, for others and for the world: a feeling contact rather than an emotional reactivity. In this contact lie well-springs we can seek to tap in our therapeutic work to aid the client's recovery from the traumas of his life.

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Strong emotional swings are related to imbalance between sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the nervous system? Deep

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this contact lie well-springs we can seek to tap in our therapeutic work to aid the client's recovery from the traumas of his life. Strong emotional swings are related to imbalance between sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the nervous system? Deep feeling states such as compassion, appreciation, love and forgiveness, as well as gratitude for whatever good things life has given us, involve an opening in the heart. The heart is the strongest emitter of energetic fields in the whole body, and every cell and organ is affected by these fields. Research studies have shown that the heart-centred feeling states involve many coupled oscillators in the body, entrainment of different biological rhythms, a rebalancing of the sympathetic and parasympathetic tendencies in the body, and the movement of the heart itself towards a state of healthy coherence.[23] For this reason therapeutic work seeks to connect patients to owning the wounds in their hearts, and towards the possibility of emotional healing for these wounds. This does not mean a premature forgiveness, or any pressure on clients that they should evolve in this direction. It does mean that over-identification with the perpetuation of anger may be blocking the very steps a person needs to take to heal his own wounds. Image Whereas the schizophrenic patient may be flooded with disconnected images, and experience great difficulty in distinguishing inner and outer reality, the depressive or obsessional client may have difficulty in remembering a single dream: the flooding of imagery on the one hand is opposed by a desert of imagery on the other. In our work with the dearth of imagery, we can evoke images by somatic work that generates new motoric experiences.[24] Work on the relationship between sensory-motor states and bodily images shows deep relationships between our awareness of the body-self, and our body-imagery.[25] Work with the flooding of imagery, in the under-contained form, involves methods that help a client to first ground his imagery in relevant life-experiences and then progress it through three levels of emergence. The first and most superficial of these three levels is that of free-floating or disconnected imagery that supports a client in remaining relatively disembodied, and relatively `superior' to his emotional states. It is a form for some clients of flight, with the risk of leading him into what Arthur Janov has called the symbolic labyrinth, a place of escapist fantasy, or defensive day-dreaming, which can sometimes be nevertheless seductive to the therapist who likes to handle imagery primarily through interpretation, translating right brain dynamics into left brain structures. The second level is the level of what Caron Kent has called the `restrictive image'. This is the level of the glass wall which surrounds us, the iron fist in the belly, the rim of ice round the heart, the nightmare knife which sticks between our shoulder-blades. If we can learn to handle this second level of imagery precisely, we can help it to release its transformative potential, for the restrictive image is the gateway to a creative image which taps the healing resources of the client, and helps him organically to transform his nightmare into a connection to an inner quality, or what we call in biosynthesis the inner ground.[26,27] A woman with a sense of her heart as a burned out volcano had depressive eyes, and greatly reduced breathing in the chest. She complained that life had little meaning. In the course of tracking the details of her dead volcano, she experienced that it exerted a magnetic pull on her: though dead it contained a strong force. She allowed herself imaginatively to accept the pull of this force, and found herself floating, surprisingly slowly, towards the dark interior of the volcano. At the bottom of the volcano she was astonished to discover a bottle. Within the bottle was a message written on a sheet of paper. The message told her: `At the bottom of the deepest black hole there is milk and honey'. This transformative image coming from a deeper layer of her unconscious, a layer linked more closely to her inner ground, enlivened her breathing, raised her muscle tone and brought the light back into her eyes. Channels of contact The embodied therapist and the embodied client enter the room. Two breathing systems interact, two motoric systems come into awareness of each other: a relationship begins in which non-verbal communication plays a very large part. Gregory Bateson described the classic double bind that is a key feature in many neurotic patterns, one form of which is a marked discrepancy between the verbal and non-verbal message which the child receives. The body psychotherapist uses the tool of what Wilhelm Reich called `vegetative identification' to sense in his own body the life crisis and also the life-potentiality coded in the body of the other.[28] The therapist works with the somatic resonance which can be established between the being of himself and the being of the other, and learns to untangle the different forms of interference which disturb this resonance.[29] Of course transference and counter-transference can be understood in a more developed way when the non-verbal components in the dialogue within the bi-personal field are recognised and included. But therapy is more than interpreting disturbance. Beyond the level of the patterns transferred from childhood, is the discovery of the organic presence of a human being who will, if his or her effect is to be therapeutic, be more closely attuned to the developing process of the patient, than the relational field where he experienced his traumas. Therapeutic contact is a place where a flow of empathy can be transmitted that can help to reconnect the patient to his ability to love himself, a prior condition for his own development of empathy for and compassion towards others. The therapist has many channels of contact he can use, beyond listening with the third ear.[30] There are whole fields of application to be aware of: the sound as well as the meaning of the voice interactions; the thousand subtle messages that can be exchanged through the eyes, and which themselves rest on the increasing understanding of the importance to healthy psychic development of good mirroring as attunement through the eyes; and the whole field of appropriate therapeutic touch is a huge subject in its own right, offering many modalities for clear relatedness, which can be particularly helpful when there has been an earlier history of misuse, as a means of helping a client to regain a clearer body-boundary.[31]

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Touch Touch deprivation and touch invasion are the twin threats to our sense of secure embodiment. John Bowlby developed his attachment theory of human relations on Winnicott's studies of the good holding environment in infancy. Through appropriate touching the parent creates the tactile somatic resonance which is an important part of the attunement we need to develop both a clear body-image and a clear sense of our embodied self.[32]

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theory of human relations on Winnicott's studies of the good holding environment in infancy. Through appropriate touching the parent creates the tactile somatic resonance which is an important part of the attunement we need to develop both a clear body-image and a clear sense of our embodied self.[32] Touch has been used as a therapeutic modality since at least the time of Hippocrates, who commented on the streaming sensations he felt in his hands. Touch is an essential modality in many somatic therapies working with breath, muscle tone, and tissue state.[33,34] Georg Groddeck presented his work with touch in psychotherapy at the 6th Congress of Medical Psychotherapy in Dresden in 1931.[35] The importance of direct-touch in body-psychotherapy has been recognised since this time, and is confirmed and reinforced by the work on `subjective anatomy' at the Deutsche Kollegium fur Psychosomatische Medicin.[36] In our therapeutic work, in my particular form of body-psychotherapy, I use many elements of touch to invite or elicit movement, to release or help contain emotion, to raise or lower muscle tone, to deepen or relax breathing, to soften or strengthen boundaries. We can speak and listen through our hands. Naturally, this work with touch is governed by the same ethics as cover all psychotherapeutic encounters: the ethics of abstinence in its primary meaning of the respect for boundaries, the informed consent of the client and the awareness of relational, transferential and counter-transferential aspects of touch. Not only can touch be helpful on the body, in the ways described, but we can also work with touch in the energetic field of the client. This form of touch, called `non-contact therapeutic touch', has been widely developed in the USA, and has been extensively researched as an important tool for dealing with stress states. It is taught at many hospitals and in university courses.[37] The indications when it is helpful to work with direct-touch and when with the indirect form of touch are part of the training in discrimination that a body-psychotherapist learns in the course of his studies in biosynthesis. Language Language has been the principal channel of psycho-therapeutic contact since psycho-analysis asked the client to lie down, close his eyes and report on the flow of his unconscious associations. We are interested of course in what the client has to tell us, but we are also interested in the how of his language, and in steps to help the language itself to become more embodied. Embodied language resonates with the depth of our experience: sharing generates not only insights, but also relief, which is felt in the tissues.[38] We pay attention to how well or badly the client's words reflect his subjective anatomy, how clear is the feeling for what he is saying. As body-psychotherapists we are translators between word and non-word, between speech and gesture, image and form.[39] We are dealing with a two way translation process, opening channels of contact between somatic experience and verbal expression, in both directions, so seeking to help the client to overcome the body-mind splitting which I mentioned at the outset.[40] The client who uses language to intellectualise his experience and avoid embodied transformation can be helped to translate downwards, from head to body. The client who was flooded with trauma in the period before speech, or shocked out of normal consciousness by later traumatic events, can be helped to translate upwards and find now the words for his experiences that he could not find then. Biosynthesis works with the inner ground of experience and with forms of language that help to manifest directions and actual expressions in the outer ground of daily life functions.[41] Case vignette A man aged around 40 presents in a state of shock and fear: the precipitating incident was the death of his father when he was about 8 years old. As soon as he contacts the scene he trembles violently and looks terrified, and talks in a confused manner. The strategy is to take him into a piece of his scene, not in age-regression but with him describing in the present what happened then, to me here. The here and now relationship needs to become a container and focuser for the child's terror. We can run the time frame backwards and forwards. We can focus on how it was before the trauma, and after. We can access other resources. Touch can be used to help him to learn choice in entering terror and in leaving it. I can help him to re-evaluate details embedded within his memories. He is 8 years old, in his bedroom at night. His father is filling the car with petrol outside the house. There is an explosion. The car and his father catch fire. His father runs burning away from the house, and dies. The boy feels guilty because in the morning of the death his father had chased him down the garden with a belt, and the boy has turned and shouted: `You had better drop dead'. He is haunted by the belief he has killed his father magically. In the pit of the fear there are no words to look at guilt. If we move before the fire we can explore where he learned his belief in the magical power of the wish. The fire bums away language. Language can cool the fire that convulses his body. We run the scene forwards: the house has been sold, his mother cannot cope any more, he is placed in a children's home, which also cannot cope with him. His mother thinks he might be crazy, `like his uncle was'. His uncle had said to his father (the boy's grandfather) `I wish you were dead'. Three days later the grandfather had died. The uncle finished up in a psychiatric ward. The fire melts everyone together. Language has to build banks against the fragmentation of shock, and help him to separate: he did not kill his father. His father died in a terrible accident. He is not crazy, even if his uncle was. His father was in a sense a hero since he ran away from the house and not towards it. His love for the father who chased him with the belt one day needs rescuing from the fire. We are rebuilding the mythology of his life in which the fire is still central, but not all consuming, in which there is a before and after, which can be deconfused in order to build islands of sanity from which the terrified boy can handle communicating safely the shock of watching his father bum to death. We are detotalising the trauma, reordering memories, revaluing history, confronting guilt, and reducing terror in the now of being fragmented by the terror from the then. Conclusion All dimensions I have described are relational. Breath is relational, touch is communicative, movement is interactive, emotionality is contactoriented, object relations become bodysubject relatedness. In the energetic dance between therapist and client, self and other, the personal bio-drama of the person seeking help becomes highlighted so that latent meanings become embodied, and a person gains help to respond to the dynamics of the inner ground guiding his incarnational journey.

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so that latent meanings become embodied, and a person gains help to respond to the dynamics of the inner ground guiding his incarnational journey. Hopefully, as the many divergent streams of psychotherapy begin to reconverge and share their areas of specialisation, we may develop a psychotherapy in the next century that is more able to integrate the dimensions of the human being that characterological deformation and cultural distortion have separated: we can learn that psychodynamic events leave their traces in the biodynamics of the tissues, and that it can be helpful to deepen our psychotherapeutic analysis by putting more emphasis on the capacities of the client to resynthesise his experiences based on a transformative re-embodiment in which somatic, psychic and spiritual levels of being are brought into co-evolution with each other. Notes 1. The founders of psychotherapeutic understanding, in the period between Charcot and Freud, included the interlinking of many key figures who were interested in somatic psychology, psychodynamic psychology and spiritual psychology. These included: Pierre Janet, who discovered the cathartic principle before Freud, Charles Richet, a collaborator of Charcot's, and a Nobel prize-winner of medicine, who was deeply involved in psychic research; Frederick Myers, one of the founders of the Society for Psychic Research, London 1882, and a major researcher into the unconscious and into multiple personality; Henri Bergson, the French philosopher whose `elan vital' was a direct inspiration to Wilhelm Reich; and Hans Driesch, whose work on the philosophy of the organic was also a major influence on Wilhelm Reich. Both Bergson and Driesch were at different times Presidents of the Society for Psychic Research. 2. Wilhelm Reich's presentation at the 13th International Congress of Psychoanalysis at Lucerne, Switzerland, in August 1934, consisted of his paper `Psychische Kontakt und vegetative Stromung' in which for the first time he introduced the basis of characteranalytic vegetotherapy. The socio-political background to this presentation is given in books by Dr Ulf Geuter (1997); Karl Fallend and myself (1973) and in the biography by Myron Sharaf on Reich. 3. The World Health Organisation supports: very progressive handling of the birth situation as a form of neurosis prevention; traditional forms of healing, many of which work with a psycho-spiritual or bio-spiritual understanding of the human being; and a bio-psycho-socio model of health which is open to the transcendental implications of life. The Congress `Patient Education 2000' was held in Geneva in 1994. 4. A systems approach to body-psychotherapy has been developed by Jerome Lisa (La Terapia Biosistemica, Milan, 1994). A cybernetic approach has been developed by the Jungian therapist and biosynthesis student, Ole Vedfelt in Bevidsthed, Copenhagen, 1996. 5. Otto Rank's view that loss of contact to religion was a source of neurosis may seem the opposite of Reich's view that neurosis was based on the blockages to sexuality and to pre-sexual libido. However, my teacher Ola Raknes, a colleague of Reich's in Oslo, in his paper `Life and religion', shows the common basis in vegetative streamings of both sexual identity and the sense of spiritual vitality (Raknes, 1976). 6. Francisco Varela and his two colleagues present a view of transformative re-embodiment built on an expanded view of cognitive science, and supported by an impressive range of scientific departments and institutes (Varela et al., 1993). 7. The State of the World Forum was set up by Mikhail Gorbachev. After Gorbachev resigned from the Presidency of the Soviet Union, he became very active in global eco-politics. At the invitation of a meeting of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders, at the time of the United National Summit on the Environment, in Autumn 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, he was asked to set up the International Green Cross, which was inaugurated in July 1993 in Geneva. 8. Darwin's ethological insights into emotionality, posture and expression, contained in his book Expression of the emotions in man and animals, first appeared in 1872. Reich never referred directly to Darwin, but William James, who exerted a great influence on my teacher, Ola Raknes, was certainly standing in this ethological tradition. Darwin's relevance to body-psychotherapy was first emphasised at my presentation in 1969 in a seminar on `Communication without Words' at the Annual Congress of the British Psychological Society, at the University of Edinburgh. 9. A study of motoric-semantic information exchange is given by the biodynamic therapist Michael Heller in a symposium at the University of Geneva. His talk and many other relevant papers on the body are found in the book The body in psychotherapy, edited by Dr Guimon, to be published later this year. 10. The understanding of intentionality was developed particularly by Nina Bull in her work on `The attitude theory of emotion' and through her was a strong influence on Stanley Keleman, direction of the Centre for Energetic Studies in San Francisco. Keleman is a major figure in body-psychotherapy, who has influenced nearly all the sub-disciplines within it. 11. The concept of shape-flow came into body-psychotherapy via the movement therapists and through dance-psychotherapy. Rudolf Laban and Elsa Gindler were important influences on body-psychotherapy, and this influence can be traced in the article by Dr Ulf Geuter (1997). 12. Harry Stack Sullivan's interpersonal theory of relationships was a major influence on Liljan Espenak, one of the colleagues of Diana Jordan, from whom I learned about the importance of shape-flow in dance-therapy. 13. Judith Kestenberg developed movement concepts within a psycho-analytic framework. 14. Karen Homey took from Reich the understanding of the motoric patterns in anger, anxiety and pleasure, and presented them in her theory of neurosis as the three attitude, towards the work, against the world and away from the world. 15. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen developed from somatic developmental psychology many understandings that are helpful within body psychotherapy (Cohen, 1993). 16. Pierre Janet first described in great detail the breathing patterns of many clients, which he illustrated graphically by showing the rhythms of expansion and contraction in both the abdomen and the chest. See Chapter 8 in Nevroses et idees fixes, (Janet, 1990, first published in a communication to la Societe de Medicine de Paris, 6 December 1895). 17. Georg Groddeck described the diaphragmatic block in 1898 (see note 33), and recommended direct work to soften the muscles that constricted the breathing. By today's standard his methods were over-pressurised, more like heavy Rolfing, but the link between repressed feelings and inhibited respiration was nevertheless made.

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18. Wilhelm Reich focused on the diaphragmatic block in the early 1930s, and working with rhythms of breathing is a fundamental

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that constricted the breathing. By today's standard his methods were over-pressurised, more like heavy Rolfing, but the link between repressed feelings and inhibited respiration was nevertheless made. 18. Wilhelm Reich focused on the diaphragmatic block in the early 1930s, and working with rhythms of breathing is a fundamental process in vegetotherapy and in all body-psychotherapies derived from it, particularly in the form known as `integrative respiration therapy' developed by Lillemor Johnsen the Norwegian psycho-physiologist from 1947 onwards. For Wehowsky see Steinaecker (1994). 19. In 1982 I could present my understanding of the importance of breath in psychotherapy at the Department of Medical Electronics in St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. This department organised the first world textbook on the psycho-physiology of breathing (Timmins & Levy, 1994). The editors were also co-founders of the International Society for Research into Respiratory Psycho-physiology linked to the University of Ohio, which organises annual congresses on the theme of emotionality in relation to breath. 20. Reich's orgasm theory is most clearly presented in his book The function of the orgasm (1942). This is built on his time as director of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Seminar, and as Vice-Director of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Polyclinik. 21. The psycho-physiology of the autonomic (vegetative) system has been researched extensively based on the well-known work of William James, Walter Cannon, Hans Selye, Ernst Gellhorn and Henri Laborit. 22. Henri Laborit developed his comprehensive theory of the inhibition of action as a root of neurosis formation. Laborit was a teacher of Jerome Liss, the founder of biosystemic psychology, and a close co-worker of the Centre for Biosynthesis (Laborit, 1979). 23. The studies of coherence in the heart grew out of the work on bio-feedback developed over the last 30 years by Professor Elmer Green and his wife Alyce. Elmer Green was invited to the Menninger Institute in Topeka, Kansas, by Gardner Murphy, in 1963, and developed the behavioural discipline of bio-feedback as a way of studying the influence of all forms of consciousness, including but not restricted to emotion. Elmer Green, like the founder of Esalan, Michael Murphy, was interested in the scientific study of altered states of consciousness. See the works of Michael Murphy and Elmer Green, and also the article by William Tiller (1993). 24. Hippolyte Bernheim introduced the `ideo-dynamic' concept as early as 1884, and this was taken further by William James in 1890. Imagination is a powerful tool with strong physiological effects. See also the work of Ernesto Rossi (1986). 25. Paul Schilder, a teacher of Wilhelm Reich's, focused very strongly on the body-image, and how it is formed or deformed by our sensori-motoric experiences. Schilder's work was developed by Peter Jorashky and by Douwe Tiemersma (Jorashky, 1983; Tiermersma, 1989). 26. Jung's Zarathustra seminars (1934) explored the concept of the energy field or subtle body as a bridge to the spiritual self. Jung's concepts were taken up in great detail, and applied practically within psychotherapy, by the Jungian therapist, Nathan Schwartz-Salant, formerly director of research at the Jungian Institute in Zurich (Schwartz-Salant, 1989). 27. The clearest work within body-psychotherapy on the grounding of imagery is to be found in the writings of Katherine Ennis Brown, Grove and Panzer, Jacob Stattman, and Andreas Wehowsky (Grove & Panzer, 1991'; Stattman, 1991). 28. Reich introduced the concept of vegetative identification in his presentation on psychic contact and vegetative current at the 13th International Psychoanalytic Congress, Lucerne, 1934. 29. Stanley Keleman developed a more extended concept of somatic resonance, in his publications from the Centre for Energetic Studies in Berkeley. Jacob Stattman, the founder of the European Association for Body-psychotherapy, worked with the concept of organic transference. 30. I developed the concept of `channel of contact' as a major tool in my work within somatic-psychotherapy biosynthesis. See in particular my book Lifestreams: an introduction to biosynthesis (1986) which grew out of my work at the University of Antioch and the University of Surrey; and the book Biosynthese Therapie, which appeared as part of the Open University Series Hand books of Psychotherapy (Rowan & Dryden, 1987). 31. The understanding that therapeutic contact is more than talking, and can involve body contact and motoric expression, was developed independently of Reich by Sandor Ferenczi, in his active method of bio-analysis, and by his successor Michael Balint. For the tracing of this line in body-psychotherapy, see the article by Dr Ulf Geuter, and the work of Dr Richard Meyer within the International Association for Somatotherapy. 32. Modern infant research, in particular the work of Daniel Stern, Joseph Lichtenberg and Hilarion Petzold, has much to teach over non-verbal forms of communication (Petzold, 1993; Lichtenberg, in Petzold, 1993; Stern, 1984). 33. Georg Groddeck used massage as an integral part of psychotherapeutic treatment from the later years of the previous century. See the paper on his work, `Gymnastik des Zwerchfells' in Cohn (1898). 34. Groddeck's theories of body-soul unity (Leib-Seele) were presented at the IXth International Psychoanalytic Congress at Bad Homburg, in September 1925. His presentation at the 6th Medical Congress for Psychotherapy in Dresden in 1931 is to be found in Bericht fiber den VI Allgemeinen arztlichen Kongress fur Psychotherapie (Kretschmer & Cimbal, 1931). 35. A broad psycho-social perspective on the importance of touch in human development is given by Ashley Montagu (1972), in his book Touching. 36. Iacob yon Uexkull, a German biologist who studied the integration between perception and motility in animal and human life, was a strong influence on Wilhelm Reich. His son, Thure yon Uexkull, is one of the founders of the holistic tradition in psychosomatic medicine, which traces its roots back to the anthropological medicine of Victor yon Weiszacker, who was a close friend and colleague of Georg Groddeck's. Thure yon Uexkull and a number of colleagues within the Deutsche Kollegium fur Psychosomatische Medizin, have co-authored the book Subjektive Anatomie, with the subtitle Theorie und Praxis der korperbezogene psychotherapie. In this book they lay a theoretical and experiential basis for the importance of body-psychotherapeutic interventions, including the somatic-developmental importance of therapeutic touch (yon Uexkull et al., 1994). 37. Wilhelm Reich described the energetic field of the hands as a form of biological radiation. His student, the Canadian biologist Bernard Grad from McGill University, published some of the earliest controlled scientific experiments on the laying on of hands. Grad's work was taken up by Dolores Krieger, who extensively studied and taught on `non-contact therapeutic touch' and succeeded in getting wide acceptance for it in clinical settings (Krieger, 1979). Her work and its developments are the subject of a forthcoming article I will write on the energetic field of the hands.

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38. The clearest work describing the different forms of language as containers of different segments from the matrix of our experience, is the work of Grove and Panzer (1991). This model has in turn been developed within body-psychotherapy, by the biosynthesis therapist, Andreas Wehowsky.

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38. The clearest work describing the different forms of language as containers of different segments from the matrix of our experience, is the work of Grove and Panzer (1991). This model has in turn been developed within body-psychotherapy, by the biosynthesis therapist, Andreas Wehowsky. 39. The concept of translation both ways between verbal and non-verbal systems of communication has been particularly developed by Jacob and Thure yon Uexkull, in a semiotic theory of information transfer traceable to Charles Peirce, one of the founders of semiotics (see note 36). 40. For my brief sketch of this process see the article, `Words, body and transference' in Maul (1992). This paper was the President's keynote speech at the 3rd European Congress of Body-Psychotherapy at Lindau, Germany, in September 1993. 41. Alfred Adler's work on organ dialect is important, but neglected. Adler's importance for bodypsychotherapy was rediscovered by G. Heisterkamp, and earlier by Stanley Keleman, director of the Centre for Energetic Studies in Berkeley, who had studied at the Alfred Adler Institute, and brought with him many insights into the formative process. The relevance of Adler's insights into the spiritual aspects of the formative process has been developed in a series of books by Adrian van Kaam, professor of psychology and director of the Institute for Formative Spirituality at Duquesnes University, Pittsburgh, USA. References BOADELLA, D. (1973). Wilhelm Reich: the evolution of his work. London: Vision Press. COHEN, B.B. (1993) Sensing, feeling and action. Northampton, MA. COHN, J. (1898). Gymnastik des zwerchfalls, Wiener Medizinische Presse, 39, 169-174. FALLEND, K. (1988). Wilhelm Reich in Wien: Psychoanalyse und Politik. Wien: Boltzmann Institut fur Geschichte der Gesellschaftswissenschaft. FREUD, S. (1991). Studies in hysteria. London: Penguine Books. GEUTER, U. (1997). Der Fall Wilhelm Reich. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. GROVE, D. & PANZER, B. (1991). Resolving traumatic memories. New York: Jovington Publications. JANET, P. (1990). Neuroses et idees fixes. Paris: Alcan. JORASHKY, P. (1983). Das Korper Schema und das Korperselbst. Munchen: Minerva Publications. KELEMAN, S. (1985) Emotional anatomy. Berkeley: Centre Press. KELEMAN, S. (1987) Embodying experience. Berkeley: Centre Press. KESTENBERG, J. (1971). The role of movement patterns in development, Vols 1 and 2. New York: Dance Notation Bureau Press. KRETSCHMER, E. & CIMBAL, W. (Eds) (1931). Bericht uber den VI Allgemeinen arztlichen Kongress fur Psychotherapie in Dresden. Leipzig: Hirsel. KRIEGER, D. (1979). The therapeutic touch. PhD thesis, New Jersey. LABORIT, H. (1979). L'inhibition de l'action. Paris & New York: Masson. MAUL, B. (Ed.) (1992). Body-psychotherapy: the art of contact. Berlin: Maul Verlag. MONTAGU, A. (1972) Touching. New York: Harper & Row. RAKNES, O. (1976). In the wake of the Reich. London: Coventure Press. PETZOLD, H. (Ed.) (1993) Psychotherapie und Baby-Forschung, vol. 2. Paderborn: Junferman. REICH, W. (1942). The function of the orgasm. New York: Orgone Institute Press. ROSSI, E. (1986) The psychobiology of mind-body healing. New York: Orgone University Press. ROWAN, J. & DRYDEN, W. (Eds) (1987). Innovative therapies in Britain. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. SCHWARTZ-SALANT, N. (1989). The borderline personality. Wilmette, IL. STATTMAN, J. (1991). The creative trance. Frankfurt: Afra Verlag. STERN, D. (1984). The interpersonal worm of the infant. New York: Basic Books. TIEMERSMA DOUWE, D. (1989). Body scheme and body image. Amsterdam: Svets & Zeitlinger. TILLER, W. (1993). New electro-physical correlates associated with intentional heart focus, Subtle Energies, 4, 251-268. TIMMINS, S. & LEVY, R. (Eds) (1994). Behavioral and psychological aspects of breathing disturbances. New York: Plenum Press. VARELA, F., THOMPSON, E. & ROSCH, E. (1993). The embodied mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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VON UEXKULL, FUCHS, M., MULLER-BRAUNSCHWEIS, H. & JOHNEN, R. (1994). Subjektive Anatomie: Theorie und 29/10/2015 Praxis der

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VARELA, F., THOMPSON, E. & ROSCH, E. (1993). The embodied mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. VON UEXKULL, FUCHS, M., MULLER-BRAUNSCHWEIS, H. & JOHNEN, R. (1994). Subjektive Anatomie: Theorie und Praxis der korperbezogene psychotherapie. Stuttgart & New York: Shattaver. WEHOWSKY, A. (1994) Atem Dialogue, in K. Steinaeker (Ed.), Der Eigene und der Fremde Korper. Berlin: Edition Lit. Europe. Resume Le but de l'article est d'introduire des psychotherapeutes de toutes orientations dans le domaine de la communication non-verbale. Chaque patient donne ainsi des informations multiples et importantes; il en va de meme du therapeute qui transmet. consciemment ou inconsciemment, beaucoup de messages somatiques. Quelques aspects de l'incarnation y sont esquisses tels que le mouvement et la position corporelle (fondes sur les decouvertes decisives de Darwin en 1872), les rythmes de la respiration (qui etaient pour Freud d'importants points d'ancrage a l'aube de la psychanalyse), les aspects sommatiques de l'expression des emotions (auxquels on accorde une grande importance dans la recherche moderne concernant les phenomenes psychosomatiques et les traumatismes) ainsi que des processus lies d l'image corporelle (qui ont ete examines par des pionniers comme Pierre Janet et Paul Schilder). Par ailleurs, l'article traite du sujet des canaux de communication, y compris le role du toucher dans la psychotherapie et de l'importance des signaux para-linguistiques tels que l'accent tonique de la parole et le contact visuel; les recherches modernes du developpement du bebe ont demontre le role decisif de ces signaux dans les processus formateurs (au sens etymologique du terme) centraux. Zusammenfassung Der, Artikel mochte Psychotherapeuten aller Richtungen in das Gebiet der non-verbalen Kommunikation einfuhren, denn jeder Klient bietet auf diese Art viele wichtige Informationen an, aber auch der Therapeut gibt ebenso, bewusst oder unbewusst, viele somatische Signale. Skizziert werden einige Aspekte der Verkorperung wie Bewegung und Korperhaltung (ausgehend von Darwins entscheidenden Entdeckungen im Fahre 1872), Rhythmen der Atmung (die fur Freud am Beginn der Psychoanalyse wichtige Ausgangspunkte waren), sowie die somatischen Aspekte des emotionalen Ausdrucks (denen in der modernen psychosomatischen und TraumaForschung grosse Bedeutung zugemessen wird), sowie Prozesse zum Korperbild (die yon Pionieren wie Pierre Janet und Paul Schilder untersucht wurden). Erortert werden auch die `Kontaktkanale', einschliesslich der Rolle der Beruhrung in der Psychotherapie, die Wichtigkeit para-linguistischer Signale wie der Betonung der Sprache und dem Augenkontakt, die, wie die moderne Sauglingsforschung erwiesen hat, zentrale formative Prozesse in der Entwicklung spielen. ~~~~~~~~ By DAVID BOADELLA Institute for Somatic Psychotherapy-Biosynthesis, Benzenruti, CH9410 Heiden, Switzerland

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