Specialized Psychology

In a world where it is only now becoming acceptable to speak among colleagues and professionals in these terms, the pre and perinatal perspective may find its place as an exemplar and guide to recovering from the four hundred year split of spirit, soul, and matter, that gave rise to scientific materialism. Given that we come into the world enjoying our own consciousness, prebirth and birth therapy is well positioned to heal not only the schism enacted on us, but the prevailing world view that we are unconscious at conception and through birth and infancy.

What if you were guided in real-time not only through technique but also via feedback from the client’s autonomous nervous system—objective feedback from the client’s body, as well as what the client volunteers about his/her body and intuition during your therapy sessions? Sound mechanistic? Perhaps too medically invasive? In truth, it is possible to humanly obtain immediate feedback from the body, using a stethoscope (an electronic or ordinary one) to listen to the clients’ digestive system’s sounds, the psychoperistalsis. The sounds we hear reveal intriguing information about the level of accuracy, quality, and attunement of the touch we’re applying.

Emilie Conrad was no stranger to fear and discomfort. Growing up in an abusive household, she suffered traumatic exposures and illnesses. Dance became her salvation. Her experiences sparked the question that became her lifelong inquiry and work: Continuum Movement.

As a second-generation Holocaust survivor, Dr. Elya Steinberg was not in the Holocaust. She was the victim of her own parents and not the Nazis, parents who did not undergo psychotherapy and therefore transmitted the trauma to her, as many Holocaust survivors did to their children when they were unable to process the horrible atrocity. They did not have enough help from mental health professionals who were also unable to process these horrible stories.

I remember, not too long ago, experiencing what I call the blame game and its potential to capsize my therapeutic relationship with a client. Each Alchemy of Shame Transformation (AST) Model session lasts 75 minutes. Although integration happens throughout the session, the last 10 or 15 minutes are reserved for cognitive integration of the experience; clients are encouraged to devote a special journal or notebook to capture the tools we harnessed from the session.

Whether psychology’s debt to Dr. Wilhelm Reich is acknowledged or not, many of our present day systems of psychotherapy rest squarely on his shoulders. Though now dead, he remains impressively alive. And in the context of what a fearful society can do to its greatest innovators, I believe his story, and in effect my story of our relationship, needs to be told far and wide.

Dr. Siegel defines the mind as an embodied and relational, self-organizing emergent process that regulates the flow of energy and information both within and between. His definition of mind is full of his own language that he develops throughout the book.

Michael Shea, PhD, educator, author, and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist explains that for healing to happen both the client and the practitioner "symbolically return to the undifferentiated wholeness of the original fluid body in the early embryo while staying in present time." Through embodiment practices, Shea says, we have the capacity to maintain our interconnectedness throughout our lives when we connect with our fluid nature, our blood, and our heart.

I am about to take two risks. The first is a great big leap into the unknown; at age 62 I have decided to end a marriage of 30 years. The second is to begin this article with this disclosure, which I have chosen to do because alongside my vulnerability is an energetic expansion and a clarity related to the decision to let go. To let go of what is known in my life and allow myself to be guided by inner truth into a void. To move into the unknown with trust in my heart knowing that this is a move toward love.

As the twentieth anniversary of war in Bosnia—Herzegovina looms, many civilian survivors remain traumatised by the events they experienced and/or witnessed. Following the end of the war, the ensuing social and political upheaval and lack of resources have resulted in chronic emotional issues and mental health problems within the civilian population.