Bioenergetics: The Revolutionary Therapy That Uses the Language of the Body to Heal the Problems of the Mind

Let me say at the outset that I believe Bioenergetics the therapy gave me my life back. Some of the ideas seemed 'far out' when I first heard of them, but Dr Lowen had described my situation so accurately in his writings that when he was describing the character that fits me, it felt like he was describing my life. I had never had the sense of being understood before. When I actually began practicing the therapy, I was able to experience a type of feeling that no other modality or idea had provided. Bioenergetics is not for the highly defensive--it holds up a mirror to our bodies and actual results in life that is usually not pretty in the beginning. or even middle, since growth takes time.Many reviewers reference Dr Lowen's "famous" comment. He told that non-flattering story about himself to illustrate an aspect of his early character to help illustrate the 'problem' of character armor, not to report his motivation to write the book. The 'famous' remark was made to Wilhelm Reich in the early 1940's and the book was written in 1975! Another reviewer has referenced the fact Lowen did not incorporate much from other body-mind theorists (other than Reich). This is true. Rather than provide sheer high numbers of 'fingers pointing' (to the moon) Lowen wanted to provide one really good finger that could actually guide people. The possible strain of absolutism in his work I don't think is so much arrogance but rather the conviction, arising from long experience, that dabbling at growth just doesn't work.Bioenergetics the book was written to 'manualize' and define concisely bio-energetics to an unfamiliar public. Because of that, it can appear that the concepts are asserted out of nowhere which is not perhaps the best introduction, especially if skepticism is strong. A perhaps better introduction to Lowen's work is  Joy: The Surrender to the Body and to Life (Compass)  If one reads Lowen's work with half an open mind, one's point of view will change about the body and its role in happiness.

This is simply an incredible book to read. It is filled with insights and ideas throughout.Don't miss it!! You can easily read dozens and dozens of books and not get the broad benefits this book has on every page. Very strongly recommended......

The book I ordered was a good copy.

Dr Lowens books are literally fantastic

I appreciate Alexander Lowen. Lot of good information in the book. If you're into mental and physical strength this book is a must read.

Great read but does require a lot of attention and focus on the subjects involved

This was a pretty good book ~ somewhere between enjoyable and technical. Definitely dry, but did help me understand bioenergetics therapy and it's origins.

Best book i've ever read on body, childhood traumas and ways to work through them

This is a very interesting book that goes into how the mind effects the body so much that the body becomes transformed in appearance to mirror the mind's thoughts. I like the author's conclusion of duality and unity and I feel he reasonably reconciles the two. I give it 4 out of 5 and not 5 out of 5 because I would prefer more of a how-to guide, or for him to delve deeper and explain the treatments more in detail so you can practice it yourself. The lesson is, move that body! It helps!!

Great book. Very interesting. Made me consider other forms of therapy. Body and mind, not just mind.

This will change you for the better.

Lowen and Pierrakos, arguably still two of the foremost and certainly, if not, the first ever neo-Reichians, ended up having different outlooks about the source of healing which led to their subsequent professional split as founders of bioenergetic analysis. Pierrakos went on to write Core Energetics: ‘Developing the Capacity to Love and Heal (1973)’ [see review] which is a fascinatingly different take on energy release incorporating elements of eastern mysticism and much more besides “treating the patient as a whole physical-emotional-spiritual unit, with the source of healing lying within itself.” (Wiki)Lowen’s Bioenergetics by contrast continued to evolve “the concept of grounding, rooting the ego firmly in the body” (Wiki) along the tradition of Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) who like the title of Lowen’s book was the first to systematically ‘Use the Language of the Body to Heal the Problems of Mind’ (1975). Reich’s character study (1933) of how the defensive armor of the body creates energetic charges and blockages was a seminal work in the early canon of psychoanalytical thought. It also appears to have gone through somewhat of a recent renaissance in laying the basis for a number of new modalities devoted to healing developmental trauma (c-PTSD). See for example, the writings of Steven Kessler (‘The Five Personality Patterns’) and Heller’s excellent NARM model [reviewed]. Indeed, since breakthroughs in neuroscientific research in the nineties I have noticed a creeping slippage of the terms ‘neurosis’ towards ‘trauma’ to practically refer to the same thing as body/mind approaches of psychosomatic unity have gradually become much more widely accepted.One of Reich’s greatest discoveries is the body’s earliest tendency to express and carry an “inevitable compromise” - an adaptive survival strategy born out of the stresses of its cultural surroundings [cf. Van der Kolk’s ‘The Body Keeps the Score:’]: “the inherent conflict between the need for intimacy and self-expression, and the fear these needs are mutually exclusive.” Unfortunately the consequences of intense conflicts of feelings that threaten the integrity of the psyche don’t just disappear they become structured in the body at an unconscious level. This ‘struggle’ is what Janov in Primal Scream (1970) came to label as neurosis and approximates Lowen’s idea of a ‘hang up’ covered here in some detail. This is when the body armor is caught in a conflict between the demands of reality and attempts to fulfil the illusion of the ego ideal: “People establish unreal goals, then keep themselves in a constant state of desperation...since giving up would be a blow to the ego.” The antidote to being hung up is to be ‘let down’ and to face reality. Bioenergetics concentration on bottom-up processing as communicated through the body introduces a number of energy blockage exercises “using the principle of flow or excitation or energy that unites head, heart and feet in one uninterrupted movement with a feeling of rightness.” Reich showed unless there is a change in one’s ‘energy economy’, that is, unless we have more energy than we discharge penetratrating ‘body consciousness’, only then can an emotional response be changed rather than a thought about a feeling - which is a function of ‘head consciousness’.The five psychological armors (character structures) are placed by Lowen in order of how a person handles the need to love, reaching out for intimacy and pleasure (patterns established in early childhood) - these in order are: schizoid - oral - psychopathic - masochistic - rigid. Each psychic character structure also acts as a defense against the one lower down in the hierarchy, while the amount of aggression available in each one “duplicates that set forth earlier in hierarchy of character types.” As an aside Kessler slightly mixes up the order while Heller remains true to its clinical origin. In brief, the Schizoid avoids intimacy, the Oral establishes closeness but is still on juvenile terms in significant relationships; the Psychopath can relate only to those who need them, as long as they are in a position to control the relationship. The masochistic’s closeness rests in the expression of submissiveness they can show for fear otherwise their freedom would lose the relationship. The Rigid forms a fairly close relationships but remains guarded.The book does a great job in explaining the key relationship differences between each character type using an an abstracted human 6-pointed figure (resembling a Star of David) as a teaching aid, and importantly offers a chance to learn from someone close to Reich himself - the first chapter is a recounting of Lowen’s early student days in analysis with Reich. However there is also plenty of latitude for fresh insights into the human condition along with delving into more philosophical topics using bioenergetics as a lens of reinterpretation. For instance when has freedom ever been described as the absence of inner restraint to the flow of feeling, or grace as the expression of the flow in movement, or beauty as a manifestation of inner harmony such a flow engenders? It is suggested that un-neurotic people handle the conflict between thinking and feeling by developing consciously accepted codes of behaviour, i.e. they are far better in harmonising the opposites in their psyche through an order of conduct or principles: “the question of principles never enters into therapy until the body has been restored to a state of pleasure by a substantial reduction of its muscular tension and blocks.” A principle in this context means that ego-mind and body, thinking and feeling are integrated into conscious unity or harmony, through conviction, for example by discovering the advantages of a body feeling like truthfulness. Such a striving to always tell the truth as a means of following a successful strategy for life is touted as an energy saver with never needing to waste one’s resources on the conflict in maintaining the lie of control, or remaining afraid of the consequence.Finally, it must be noted that Lowen (and Pierrakos) believed that Reich’s emphasis that words could be dispensed with by direct work on the body’s energy processes alone “failed because words are part of volition, still indispensable to human functioning as the great storehouse of human experience [representing] objective reality.” As pointed out volition doesn’t have to relive the experience itself again as words become appropriate substitutes for action. Bioenergetics was founded in 1956, Bandler and Grinder released NLP around 1975 – I’ll leave this last point teasingly as a hang up...!

I went through 3 years of therapy based on this book it transformed my life. I became a therapist, got married had two children. Lived out my dreams. Photographer, Chef, Osteopath, International Business Consultant. Lived in Portugal for 8 years, Hong Kong for 6. Travelled the world. Now at 72 like Edith Piaf I have no regrets thanks to what is in this book.