→ Psychotherapy generally → Integrative Body PsychotherapyIntegrative Body Psychotherapy
Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) and Alexander Lowen founded the integrative body psychotherapy by their therapeutial work. It joins concepts of depth psychology together with parts of bio-energetics, gestalt-therapeutical body work and regressive breath therapy to form an integral approach.
It is based on the insight that repressed feelings, experiences and phantasies block mental and physical experience. These blockades appear e.g. in chronic tensions, deficient body expression and psychosomatic grievances. They become perceivable in a multitude of troubles which impedes a full development of human life energies.
During the therapeutical work the individual suppression fortune is being decoded by means of the “body memory” and body language. This process is focused on childhood experiences, patient-therapy relationship and emotional, physical and rational experience and processing of past and current conflicts.
The basic and decisive item is the dialog between client and therapist. Body techniques selected in a topic-oriented way are integrated into this dialog in order to alter the way of breathing, the muscular structure and the unconscious body view. They are less aimed at feeling and experiencing what is currently happening.
The goal of integrative body psychotherapy is to open various levels of human experience: body perceptions, body expression, inner imaginations and phantasies, feelings, and understanding and classification. This growing integration of body and soul, of feeling and understanding, stimulates integral perception, experience and accepting of oneself and the world.
Integrative body psychotherapy can be used to handle various physical-mental problems. It is mainly used for individual therapy but sometimes also for couples, families and groups.