A younger disciple of Freud’s, Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), took a side-step away from the psychoanalytic tradition by insisting on the importance of physical and bodily processes in the development of the mind. He developed a holistic theory of human nature, saying that there were not two separate entities called ‘mind’ and ‘body’ which had to be treated in different ways, but that mental liberation and bodily liberation were one and the same thing. Reich asserted that Freud’s libido, the mental energy that lies behind and sustains our unconscious drives and desires, was in fact a physical and real energy he called ‘orgone energy’ and he devoted the latter half of his career to attempting to measure and use it.

Reich was a prickly and paranoid character, and also one of the inspirations behind the countercultural revolution of the 1960s, which prevented his ideas being taken seriously for a long time, at least in the UK (he has always been more influential in Europe). However many of his ideas have been borne out by later discoveries about the sympathetic nervous system and the effect of long-term stress on the body.

There is no such thing now as ‘Reichian therapy’ but his ideas were developed and elaborated by people like Alexander Lowen, Gerda Boyesen and Jack Lee Rosenberg and now form a distinct school of Body Psychotherapy. Body psychotherapists work with the body as much as the mind; many use techniques like massage and physical exercises as well as traditional talking therapy, not as complementary therapies in their own right, but to help the client experience the way stress, anxiety and depression have impacted on, and are perpetuated by, physical attributes such as muscle tone and posture. Body psychotherapy may be particularly valuable for people who experience difficulty expressing or acting on emotions or who suffer from psychosomatic illness.

Contact

The Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy – http://www.chiron.org/ – 020 8997 5219.