Including the body in psychotherapy

The development of Bioenergetic Analysis

Abstract

This paper describes the development of Bioenergetic Analysis, one of the more recent psychotherapies to arrive in New Zealand. Bioenergetics opens up psychoanalytic theory and practice to include all aspects of the self: the mind, the body, emotion, energy and relationship. In doing so it provides a holistic psychotherapy for the twenty-first century. The paper describes Bioenergetic's beginnings with Wilhelm Reich, a contemporary of Freud, and its establishment by Alexander Lowen. It critiques Bioenergetic's association with the 'cathartic' approach of the 1960s and describes how Bioenergetics is integrating Reich's and Lowen's work with current thinking about the therapeutic relationship.