Body Psychotherapy

This book is the first in a series of books dealing with Advancing Theory in Therapy. The focus of this volume is Body Psychotherapy, a fairly new approach to psychotherapy. It consists of articles by Nick Totton, Bernd Eiden, Tree Staunton, Roz Carroll, Babette Rothschild, Margaret Landale, Philippa Vick, Rose Cameron and Roger Woolger. All well established practitioners in this field. One of the main themes in the book is a description of the various aspects of body psychotherapy. The articles give a history of body psychotherapy, Freud's, Jung's and Reich's role in body psychotherapy, the important and controversial issue of sexuality and body psychotherapy, the appropriateness of touching the client and the use of imagery in body psychotherapy. The subjects of psycho-spiritual body psychotherapy and the concepts and use of subtle energies as well as past life regression are also covered. Together the articles present a broad and varied view of body psychotherapy. Another of the book's themes is a discussion of where and how body psychotherapy fits in to conventional psychotherapy. It soon becomes quite obvious that the views of the various authors differ quite substantially as to how body psychotherapy works and how it should be conducted, which is typical for a new kind of psychotherapy that has branched out from its mainstream roots. Still, it is obvious that the authors wish to have more recognition for their type of work, in particular from conventional psychotherapy. I read the book as an "outsider" as regards body psychotherapy, but as an "insider" as regards understanding the difficulties a new and "alternative" type of therapy has to face. Regrettably, I am rather surprised and disappointed to see how little the book addresses the challenge of "re-defining" psychotherapy as a whole rather than trying to fit the apparently "square-shaped" new type of therapy into the "round hole" offered by the established conventional psychotherapy. Unfortunately the discussion is more concerned with how to adapt to conventional psychotherapy, than why body psychotherapy does not fit into the conventional psychotherapy paradigm. The tone for this discussion is to some extent set in the first chapter of the introduction where Tree Staunton points out that body psychotherapy has been taken less seriously because of its association with "alternative fringe" therapies such as primal therapy, rebirthing, shiatsu etc. Understandable as it may be, it is nevertheless unfortunate when a new therapy form feels the need to distance themselves from other new therapies, in particular when this is done without explanation of why and with apparent ignorance of the therapies being dismissed. In my view it would be preferable that there should be some form of neutral dialogue between the various strands of psychotherapy. They would be far better trying to understand and integrate each other's differences rather than fighting to keep their own territories. Having said this, the book as a whole offers a very good insight into body psychotherapy. In particular for breathwork, another form of new body-oriented therapy, the book offers valuable information from specialists on body work. Regardless of their own view on the subject, they work in a way which is more congruent with breathwork and other body-oriented therapies, than they may recognise.