We can also talk about another way of psychotherapy. In contrast to the psychodynamic and clinical areas, here the main interest is focused on the external elements (in relation to the basic constitutional and genetic personality type) on how specifically the experience is expressed, and, in particular, on how much energy the body spends on its «feeding. This approach can be called psychoenergetic, to which somatopsychotherapy belongs.
Im not interested in what and how Im interested in how much
In a simplified form, the position of a somatopsychotherapist can be stated as the following: I am not interested in what the patients thinks or how they do it, I am interested in how much they think about it, how much energy they give it. If it is more than the normal it is a disease, if it is less than normal it is also the disease.
If, after a trip to England, they think they ate beef infected with «mad cow disease (BSE), I am not going to talk to them about the incubation period of variant CJD. I am also not going to dissuade this person that they caught a terrible disease and now they are going to die. (Especially since I do not know if they are infected or not.) I am interested only in one thing: how long are they going to think about it? Now they dedicate to this almost 24 hours a day, spending 99% of their vitality. Is that what it needs, or can it be less?
How can I make a person who has lost sleep and peace think about the amount of energy spent on the experience (and not on solving problems)? Here is the answer: through simple questions about what they experience «at body level because of what has happened.
The soul has a body
As it turned out, two simple questions Where? and What set in relation to experiences, lead to the fact that the soul reveals its body! The feelings are depicted, and the soul, just as light, reveals its particle nature along with the wave.
The name of the method somatopsychotherapy emphasizes its specific feature. It works with the soul as with the body (or with the body as with the soul). However, this body is not physical, «medical, but the body of consciousness, the «psychological one.
Somatopsychotherapy (SPT) (with the emphasis on the first syllable, from the Greek «Somos «body) SPT-stands for: «Work with somatized equivalents of mental experiences1. Fortunately, this formulation intrigued not only my children, who used to ask asked me: «How are your «somatized equivalents doing there?» My colleagues interest in my work encouraged me to think about writing the book that you are holding in your hands now.
Filling of the body of consciousness
As a result of the catalysis of bodily sensations, the consciousness-body shows itself as filled or, rather, realized as a set of mental objects. They can be good, such as love, joy, etc., or bad, such as hatred, fear, etc.
If we consider a person in this paradigm, it turns out that by the time of the meeting with the therapist, they (as a result of the elections, consciously or unconsciously made by the body earlier) have transformed into light, warmth, space, lightness and then there is no need for a therapist, or on the contrary into the darkness, heat, tightness, heaviness in places of linkage or accumulation of energy (substance «heat heaviness, as it is called in SPT), and at the same time into dullness, cold, «aridity, numbness in the devastated areas. In this case we have all the indications for therapy.
The backward therapy
The therapy based on body sensations moves in the opposite direction to what has been developed in most modern psychotherapeutic approaches. I call them therapy forward, which is aimed at the release of a once pent-up emotional charge. Through the study of resistance, the dynamics of expression is encouraged. The opposite dynamics of the suppression has also got some supporters. What, if not suppression, is therapy by coding or torpedo in case of alcoholism?
True and false alternatives
During exams in medical school, students are often asked a provocative question: are lobar pneumonia-rale in the lungs fine or large bubbled? The correct answer does not imply either the first or the second options, because there is no rale in the lungs in case of lobar pneumonia.
So, to encourage expression or suppression of emotions seems to me the same false alternative. There is at least one other way out to return to the original situation through the entrance. Emotional life is not a one-way street where traffic jams occur. It resembles rather a flat surface with a ball on it, which can lurch in any direction. The ball can roll back just as it can move forward until it falls from the surface. Instead of building barriers to the movement of the ball, you can change the angle of inclination it is possible to simply calm down, refusing both expression and suppression of emotions. It is not the same as giving emotions a way out. That means getting them back in.
Perhaps a comparison to removing the detonator from the bomb would help to explain what I mean. The disposal of an explosive projectile would mean refusing both to detonate it and to conceal it. When it is dismantled, it is possible to think of the new use of the potential energy stored in it. The same uranium that threatened to destroy all life can become a filling for the reactor of a power plant, supplying both light and heat.
Thus, we can give forces the ability to stop completely, go back, and then look for a new solution to the problem, being in the new state. This is the way to discharge both dynamics.
The psychostatic paradigm
Stopping consciousness and turning it into a body is a method, that opens up new opportunities in psychotherapy. I have called it psychostatic, after correlating with better known psychodynamic principle.
The above-mentioned principle «where involves searching in space for the affects as charged objectified (somatized) structures and allows us to speak about «topographic (or topical) psychology (perpendicular to «chronological in particular, transpersonal). In general, this method can be called «Topographic psychology and the psychostatic paradigm in psychotherapy.»
Therapy «backwards, is the technique of «zeroing the patients condition, calm «without annexation and indemnity these are some of the names of the therapeutic part of the work.
This method is a worthy alternative to the existing methods of restoring the psychophysical balance of a person.
An eye view can melt the stones
Instead of trying to revive the almost dead (petrified) feelings, somatopsychotherapy offers to dissolve them, to let them die completely. Though, not to disappear, but to be reborn in a new capacity.
One of the discoveries of somatopsychotherapy, in my opinion, is the fact that, if a person refrains from hysterical, hypochondriac, phobic and other pathological ways of responding to the fact of the awareness of the «stones within them, and retains a calm, judicious attitude to conscious, this suffering person becomes a winner, they get their power back, reborn like a Phoenix from the ashes. The task of the somatopsychotherapist is to help the patient create and maintain a working tone in relation to these phenomena, without unnecessary affectation, but by understanding the significance of what is happening.
The patients can melt the stones with their own eyes, and it will not be just a «game of imagination, but a real change to: 1) the structure of their consciousness; 2) the state of their body.
Working with sensations as a method of psychotherapy is highly effective and fast-acting. It can change the patients condition radically and do it without the phantasmagoric external manifestations inherent in some known types of therapy.
For my last preliminary remark, my own experience and communication with colleagues brings me to the idea that along with the division into schools in the world practice, there is a very simple division into «fast and «slow or «short and «long types of psychotherapy.
Experience makes us accept the fact that all forms of work are important. The fact that you can work with a patient for five, ten minutes, or even a year, or two, or more, and all this will be normal psychotherapy, does not seem to be a paradox.
So-called classical schools, such as clinical psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, or younger schools like gestalt therapy, tend to work over the long time. Among «short-term schools, there are representatives of neuro-linguistic programming, next to them, perhaps, eriksonians and some other supporters of empirical, short-term, intensive psychotherapy.
This method also draws from the intensive and short-term schools. It is good for working through traumas. However, it is as thorough as the therapies of the first «classic group.
1500 patients
From my point of view, this study takes into consideration the most important issues of psychotherapy.
How to bring the patients to an understanding of their inner state?
How to change that inner state for better?
How to get a sustainable result?
After 15 years of research, this method has been formed by the process of solving psychological and psychosomatic problems of more than 1500 people during 35 sessions of one hour with each of them.
Introduction
Every psychotherapist and practicing psychologist know about patients descriptions of their bodily sensations. There is no more or less noticeable experience that would not be accompanied by a burning of the chest, or a pain in the head, or compression in the abdomen.
Different attitude to the body sensations
In classical medicine, the body sensations are taken into account to clarify the diagnosis and monitor the dynamics.
Clinical psychotherapy calls them vegetative accompaniments of experiences.
In psychoanalysis, they serve as a material for the interpretation and construction of structures, where through somatic symptoms «the body reports the dominant idea of the «subconscious. The subject of the searches is the idea underlying the formation of the symptom.
In the context of Jungians approach, there can also be situations in which patients indicate body sensations in the process of experiencing certain archetypal scenes, but these feelings rarely fall into the focus of attention. More importance is given to the semantic elaboration of the symbols.
Gestalt therapy pays more attention to body sensations to establish contact with them, to find out their «addressee, if any, and to complete the unfinished deal associated with them.
Psychosynthesis does not exclude the use of body parts to establish mutually beneficial contact between them. In this case heart, brain, stomach, ears, personified as subpersonalities, can sort out their relationship, but this process does not have the nature of direct work with sensations.
Reichian body-oriented psychotherapy attaches great importance to the analysis of the «rings of tension at the level of the eyes, mouth, neck, chest, abdomen, pelvis, forming a «protective shell around the body, delaying the free flow of «bioenergy, and considers its important task to work through the «muscle armor. However, this approach works primarily with the surface of the body.
Erickson hypnotherapists use descriptions of body sensations to create a background of reliability in the process of «soft trance guidance. Bodily sensations in this tradition are highly valued for their credibility. With their help, hypnotherapists often receive from their clients, a credit of trust, which a person is inclined to give to someone who has correctly described at least three components of his bodily experiences. An erickson hypnotist describes what a person feels with their body but thinks about something else.
Heres how body sensations are characterized from the point of view of neuro-linguistic programming: «Evaluative meta-feelings about other perceptions or representations, also called emotions, feelings, or visceral kinesthetic, which are presented in the chest and/or abdomen, or in the midline of the body. These feelings are not direct sensations/perceptions, but representations derived from other sensations/perceptions.2" «Other sensations/perceptions» specifically visual, auditory and kinesthetic are the main focus of attention in NLP.
The ontopsychology of Menegetti attaches great importance to the knowledge of the doctors own body sensations in the process of communication with the patient and the study of «semantic field. However, in this case the appeal to the sensations is of an official nature.
The process-oriented psychotherapy of A. Mindell touches the sensations in the prosses of working with the «channels of perception.
There are many reports of body sensations during sessions of holotropic breathing according to the methodology of S. Grof.
We can say that every serious school of psychotherapy somehow reacts to the fact of the presence of body sensations brought about from experiences, but almost none of the existing schools work directly with them, thus remaining within the indirect use of this phenomenon. I would like to name the way it is done as external.
Psychocatalysis of body sensations works with sensations directly, «internally using them.
Traditional Russian attitude to body sensations
As real force that significantly affects the health of our fellow citizens, this tradition does not exist. The interests of the social experiment, which our country went through, demanded special personal qualities from its participants. The inclination to introspection was not listed among them. Moreover, its manifestations were considered almost counter-revolutionary. The battles for the harvest and other battles for agriculture, industry and other fronts did not include any study of body sensations. That era put forward its heroes. However, their valor was not intended to be healthy for, but rather, to be useful to society.