Among the therapies that favor the liberation of emotions and affections, character-analytic therapy gathers and updates the contributions of Freud, Reich, Jung or Perls to regain health and ecological awareness.
There are times in life when we have a crisis
crisis with ourselves and our environment.
environment. Emotional suffering, fears, the tyranny of dependencies, the impotence to achieve our challenges, together with self-aggressive tendencies, are factors that alter our perception and plunge us into a world of resignation and pessimism that deteriorates and hinders our health and joy of life.
Psychotherapy, with the help of a properly trained specialist, can help to change these situations and even transform the lives of those who wish to deepen their self-knowledge in order to continue growing internally. From the clinical point of view, although there are different models with their own ways of contemplating.
However, the liberating therapies have a common thread based on a number of key contributions.
THE UNCONSCIOUS
Sigmund Freud, creator of psychoanalysis and father of psychotherapy, discovered the influence of the unconscious on our consciousness, embodied in dreams, slips of the tongue and psychological and somatic symptoms. In order to decipher its code and favor its integration with the other parts of the psyche, he developed an analytical method based on «free association».
One of his most interesting contributions was the concept of «transference», the repetition in the clinical space of infantile affective experiences. He observed that, on occasion, his patients the feelings they had towards him or the perception of his attitude towards them changed without anything having happened to justify it. Dissatisfaction, anger, the feeling of being poorly attended to or the feeling of being attacked appeared unexpectedly and not always consciously.
Transference became one of the main tools of psychotherapy. By making these perceptions conscious and understanding their origin and influence, the person achieves changes in his or her self-perception and in the way he or she relates to others.
THE MUSCULAR ARMOR
A few years later, Wilhelm Reich, neuropsychiatrist, sexologist and disciple of Freud, noted that the unconscious is also reflected in chronic muscular rigidities, in the inhibition of the muscular armor of the muscles, and that the unconscious is also reflected in chronic muscular rigidities, in the inhibition of the muscular armor of the muscles respiratory system or in the difficulty to abandon oneself to visceral experiences, such as orgasm.
He then developed the concept of «ca-racteromuscular armor», a sum of bodily and behavioral defensive mechanisms that facilitates a better understanding of the connection between mind, body and emotions. Reich proved the influence of the repression of affectivity and sexuality, both in the family, educational and social systems, and, consequently, the need for relational and educational changes to prevent pathology and emotional suffering.
His radical socio-political questioning in a period of great tension in Europe
-especially in the face of the advance of Nazism – provoked irresolvable conflicts in the psychoanalytic institution, and Reich was forced to go his own way. He then developed a body psychoanalysis that he defined as «vege-character-analytic therapy», later «orgone-therapy», which constitutes the matrix of the so-called «body psychotherapies» and influenced some aspects of Gestalt therapy and most of today’s psychotherapies.
OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS
Carl Jung, psychiatrist, disciple of Freud and also a dissident of the institution, made important contributions, among them the notion of «collective consciousness», archetypes, and his techniques to free us from a part of our personality, «the shadow», which limits our human potentiality.
Fritz Perls, psychiatrist, student of Wilhelm Reich and pioneer of the Esalen Institute in California (USA) in the 1960s, creator of Gestalt therapy, insists on the importance of freeing oneself from prejudices and fears in order to live intensely in the «here and now”.
Other professionals continue to deepen and contribute ideas and clinical tools to current psychotherapy, within the already existing models or creating new ones, such as the so-called
«relational psychotherapy”.
ACTION AND PREVENTION
Today, following Wilhelm Reich’s path enriched by the contributions of other specialists, and without forgetting the evolution of the rest of the avant-garde psychotherapy models, we have systematized a psychotherapy that we define as «character-analytic» consisting of individual interventions – combined with group sessions if necessary – and couple sessions, which implies, in many occasions, team work and a protocol that follows these steps:
- Structural evaluation sessions to know the global reality of the person. This allows us to propose a project adapted to each case, either based on a framework with limited objectives and a duration of about twenty individual sessions and some group sessions (brief character-analytic psychotherapy), or following a deep process without a specific time (structural character-analytic vegetotherapy).
– In crisis situations, we may advise a psychotropic drug or other convergent techniques on a case-by-case basis.
– The central axis is the «transferential therapeutic relationship». A space of respect for the rhythm of each patient is established, with tolerance and empathy, and a dynamic of complicity and cooperation towards common objectives.
- Within the clinical process in the «Rei-chian couch», together with the analysis of dreams and body and character manifestations, we use muscular movements or systematized actings through which we enhance
We allow the unconscious to emerge, we disconnect traumas and facilitate the emergence of repressed childhood emotions that may be linked to memories or other mental associations, following Wilhelm Reich’s maxim: «Every muscular rigidity contains the history and meaning of its origin».
Reich’s maxim: «Every muscular rigidity contains the history and meaning of its origin».
– From the «analytical» position, emotional experiences and the memories that accompany them are integrated and elaborated. This has repercussions on the patient’s present reality and allows him/her to recover and strengthen both his/her personal and vital capacities and their management in his/her daily reality.
– In our practice, we have found that the causes of human suffering and its loss of ecological connection are due to the social reality and relational conflicts of the eco-societies.
