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Wilhelm Reich and the post-Reichians are considered the central element of body psychotherapy. [11] From the 1930s, Reich became known for the idea that muscular tension reflected repressed emotions, what he called 'body armour', and developed a way to use pressure to produce emotional release in his clients. [12]
Wilhelm Reich was first to try to develop a clear psychodynamic approach that included the body. [1] Several types of body-oriented psychotherapies trace their origins back to Reich, though there have been many subsequent developments and other influences on body psychotherapy, and somatic psychology is of particular interest in trauma work.
Reichian therapy can refer to several schools of thought and therapeutic techniques whose common touchstone is their origins in the work of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957). Some examples are: Character Analysis, the analysis of character structures that act in the form of resistances of the ego.
Wilhelm Reich (/ r aɪ x / RYKHE; German: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈʁaɪç]; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian doctor of medicine and a psychoanalyst, a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. [1]
One element of somatic experiencing therapy is "pendulation", [3]: 255 a supposed natural intrinsic rhythm of the organism between contraction and expansion. The concept and its comparison to unicellular organisms can be traced to Wilhelm Reich, the father of somatic psychotherapy. [17]
Reich argued that "the feeling of unity of all body sensations ... increases with each new dissolution of an armor ring," [2] leading ultimately to a merger with the autonomic functions of the body. He considered that " orgone physics reduces the emotional functions of humans even much further, to the forms of movement of molluscs and protozoa ...
Reich argues that character structures were organizations of resistance with which individuals avoided facing their neuroses: different character structures — whether schizoid, oral, psychopathic, masochistic, hysterical, compulsive, narcissistic, or rigid — were sustained biologically as body types by unconscious muscular contraction.
The Mass Psychology of Fascism [5] (German: Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus) is a 1933 psychology book written by the Austrian psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, in which the author attempts to explain how fascists and authoritarians come into power through their political and ideologically-oriented sexual repression on the popular masses.