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I focus my reviews on prepublication manuscripts and “hot-off-the-press” texts. Because I’m a small niche publication, I try to offer readers material they cannot get else where. But I started to wonder about revised and second editions. All things considered, it can take years for people to write and publish their work. The time, the turmoil, the tears. It takes a toll. Combine joy, release, and celebration to that mix? You just might create a tsunami of emotional and/or physical impact on one’s body and soul. The question nudging my brain awake at 2 am was: Why do authors go through that ordeal with the same material? Isn’t once done, good enough?

Will Davis recently shared a paper he’d written on the role of connective tissue in character and armour development. After re-evaluating Reich's concept of muscular armour, Will offered a different perspective: he felt that the holdings in the myofascial system were primarily present in connective tissue (CT), not the muscles per se as Reich assumed. Will emphasized the connective tissues’ protective response to stress, and its plastic ability, during certain conditions, to return to the prestressed, healthy state. A matrix, he says, that acts as a non-neural, instantaneous communication system throughout the body, is formed because of the semi-conductive quality of connective tissue. When I received his paper, I noted that it was 20 pages long. My initial instinct was, What? Magazine articles average 1500 words in length, not tens of thousands. And still, to honor my colleague, I read his paper. Thank goodness I did. I was fascinated by the content and pleased with the writing style—figurative language, first person, logical comparisons, concrete examples shedding light on conceptual renderings. I learned new content and enjoyed the experience. As such, I am sharing his paper with you. I offer some excerpts from his text (not in linear sequence as presented in the paper) and a link to download the PDF to print and read at your leisure.

Doctors generally begin their journey as eager medical students determined to change the world one patient at a time. With intelligence, compassion, and a desire to help others, medical students muster up enough drive to fight through medical school and residency, accepting the hours of work, sleepless nights, and giant holes left in their bank account in pursuit of what they believe to be a worthwhile, fulfilling profession both morally and economically. However, in Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician, Sandeep Jauhar suggests that it’s difficult to maintain this view within the current medical climate because it’s dominated by the government and large corporations set out to generate income, even if it’s at patients’ expense. In this powerful and thought-provoking memoir, Jauhar utilizes case studies and anecdotes as he reveals his journey as a doctor facing what he refers to as “the midlife crisis in American medicine” and his attempts to understand why “medicine today is as fraught as it’s ever been” (15).

Intimacy from the Inside Out (IFIO) by Toni Herbine-Blank, Donna M. Kerpelman, and Martha Sweezy is geared toward psychotherapists who are seeking an alternative method for practicing couples therapy. IFIO therapy stems from Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS), a model developed by Richard Schwartz in the 1980s as an approach to working with individuals and families, then later expanded to include couples. IFIO couple’s therapy involves a two-step process of planning for the predictable universal issues that couples face and responding skillfully to other unexpected factors. Couples entering IFIO therapy often hold the two goals of feeling safe within their relationship and reestablishing intimacy. In the initial session, the therapist meets with the couple to inquire about hopes and goals, assess their ability to accept differences in each other, and then offer a perspective on the possibilities of treatment.

Many of my clients are faced with returning to environments which were and are emotionally hostile and traumatizing. They are treated the way they were treated in childhood. Even thinking about these past events resurrects post traumatic stress. But clients believe they have no alternative than to return to those environments. Work, holidays, illness, deaths call for their return. The return then reinforces past emotional wounds. These events occur time after time, but their underlying dynamics are unconscious. I call these events anniversary events (Kisch, 2019). Most often just being aware of returning to these environments is sufficient to trigger anniversary reactions. How does one protect clients from this re-traumatization when just talking about it does not work?

“These are difficult times.” One member noted during my mid-November stress management group. “Everyone is angry. People who used to be friends are not speaking. It’s giving me stomach aches.” “I know!” Her couch mate said with sadness in her voice. “There are too many changes. I’m having migraines.” Group members discussed their usual stressors—interpersonal conflicts, worries about children and grandchildren, work stress, a few health concerns—but on that fall morning I sensed a difference in their presence and in each person’s felt sense of his/her stress. “Maybe it would help to talk about it,” said a group member settled in the rocking chair. “In times like these we all need support.”

As many of you may know, SPT Magazine will no longer send emails to our subscribers—simply put, not enough people opened our notes to make it fiscally responsible. We will still be publishing our excellent features and articles, our reviews and author reflections. And you can still access everything via our website at www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday.com, we just will no longer send out our twice a year links for our publications. And we have heard from many of you that you do not do Facebook. Serge Prengel has generously offered to share our links and our articles with his LinkedIn group, Somatic Mindfulness in Psychotherapy at http://linkedin.somaticperspectives.com and via his Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/somaticmindfulness/ . He will also share our information in his newsletters. We are grateful for Serge’s support and his willingness to share our publications beyond our website and our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/SomaticPsychotherapyToday/

When we help clients neurobiologically separate out early shame from grief, we bring them to the awareness of how present day experiences are actually a confusing entanglement of calling cards from the past. As the responses separate and integrate with support into the client's present day self, a felt sense of choice and autonomy emerge.

The book is imbued with the serious belief that the human mind and soul is not an accidental side product of genes, brain, and body, but a dimension in the human where he/she strives to fulfill his/her talents and aptitudes, including the possible healing of traumatic experiences in earlier stages. Spirit as well as body as necessary but not sufficient condition for being and becoming human

SPT Magazine is pleased to announce the release of Volume 12, Number 1, 2022. If you missed any of our articles this year, you can now access the entire year in one downloadable PDF on our website.