Ian
Macnaughton, Body, Breath and Consciousness. A Somatics Anthology. North
Atlantic Books, 2004,
This book
offers a collection of reprinted articles by authors of the Bodynamic
Institute, by David Freedman, Peter Levine and Erving Poster, completed with
articles by the editor, Ian Macnaughton.
The editor
divided the complex material into five sections: ‘family systems’,’
self-psychology’, ‘the Bodynamic model of somatic developmental psychology’,
‘shock trauma’ and ‘breath work’.
The
holistic and multi-integrated approach represented in all contributions shows a
broad view on the development of the self in context of its history and
biology, widely based on the idea of mutual connection as the basic drive.
Mutual connection is explicitly formulated by Bodynamics but is also underlying
the articles on systemic and multi-generational family therapy. It goes along
with the orientation on the clients’ resources, including also peak-experiences
(Jarlnæs and Van Luytelaar) and the view on the therapeutic setting as a safe
place for the clients to explore their own story and to find their own truth
(Macnaughton).
Awareness
of body and movement is a red thread throughout the articles.
The biggest
part presents the Bodynamic model of somatic developmental psychology, in Waking the Body Ego. Part I and II
discuss the concepts and principles of working with psychomotor development in
therapy (I) and present a detailed description of psychomotor development and
character structure (II).
The reader
will find inspiring theory approaches referring to recent important research of
other scientific fields and references to other concepts of body psychotherapy.
Yet the implications for the practice of body-psychotherapy are made explicit
everywhere. In all of the articles you will find a remarkable skill of
conceptualising, like for example in the frame-work for ethical considerations
in body-psychotherapy (Macnaughton, Bentzen, Jarlnæs), or in the aspects for
clear distinction between developmental trauma and shock trauma (Waking the Body Ego, Part I). In
addition, models for concrete practice are offered like the Body Knot Model (Jarlnæs,
Marcher).
In Peter
Bernhardt’s interviews with Lisbeth Marcher, the roots of the Bodynamic
approach are distinguished from Reich’s theory, and connecting lines to other
approaches are drawn.
The
publishing of this collection of articles really supports integrative
understanding and inspires further discussion and professional exchange.
The editor
did a great job by starting each section with a short preface, indicating how
the articles fit together and how the parts relate. The missing references to
the first publishing and origin of the articles might have been helpful for
historical assignment of their contribution to the development of theory on
body-psychotherapy.
Ingeborg
Joachim