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.