This book looks at the ground-breaking work of the London based Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy, bringing together Chiron trainers and therapists, describing how their approach has enabled cutting-edge thinking.

Contemporary Body Psychotherapy: The Chiron Approach looks at the ground-breaking work of the London based Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy, a training centre recognised worldwide by professionals in the field. The book brings together Chiron trainers and therapists, describing how their integrative approach has enabled cutting-edge thinking. Divided into two parts, the book deals with topics including: the roots and the development of the Chiron approach self-regulation ¿ an evolving concept at the heart of body psychotherapy the evolution of an embodied, integral and relational approach to psychotherapy moving towards an integrative model of trauma therapy At a time when the psychotherapeutic profession has turned its interest towards the body and its intrinsic psychological dimension, Contemporary Body Psychotherapy: The Chiron Approach offers a timely and valuable contribution to the literature. It will provide essential reading for those practicing or involved with body psychotherapy, offering a new synthesis with the psychoanalytic tradition, as well as appealing to a wider audience of mental health professionals and academics with an interest in the area.

A groundbreaking approach to transforming traumatic legacies passed down in families over generations, by an acclaimed expert in the field Depression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood. As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over twenty years. It Didn’t Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms. Techniques for developing a genogram or extended family tree create a map of experiences going back through the generations. And visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue create pathways to reconnection, integration, and reclaiming life and health. It Didn’t Start With You is a transformative approach to resolving longstanding difficulties that in many cases, traditional therapy, drugs, or other interventions have not had the capacity to touch.

This acclaimed work, first published in 1985, presents in full detail, the most effective aspects of bioenergetics, Gestalt therapy, psychomotor therapy, Reichian orgonomy, and many others, are fully detailed, along with a wealth of practical therapeutic techniques. This book is divided into four parts: the historical and theoretical perspective; the body as the locus of personality assessment; the body as the locus of psychotherapeutic intervention; and personal and ethical considerations.

Popular interest in body image issues has grown dramatically in recent years, due to an emphasis on individual responsibility and self-determination in contemporary society as well as the seemingly limitless capacities of modern medicine; however body image as a separate field of academic inquiry is still relatively young. The contributors of Body Image and Identity in Contemporary Societies explore the complex social, political and aesthetic interconnections between body image and identity. It is an in-depth study that allows for new perspectives in the analysis of contemporary visual art and literature but also reflects on how these social constructs inform clinical treatment. Sukhanova and Thomashoff bring together contributions from psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists and scholars in the fields of the social sciences and the humanities to explore representations of the body in literature and the arts across different times and cultures. The chapters analyse the social construction of the 'ideal' body in terms of beauty, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class and disability, from a broadly psychoanalytic perspective, and traces the mechanisms which define the role of the physical appearance in the formation of identity and the assumption of social roles. Body Image and Identity in Contemporary Societies' unique interdisciplinary outlook aims to bridge the current gap between clinical observations and research in semiotic theory. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, art therapists, art theorists, academics in the humanities and social sciences, and those interested in an interdisciplinary approach to the issues of body image and identity. Ekaterina Sukhanova is University Director of Academic Program Review at the City University of New York USA. She serves as Scientific Secretary of the Section for Art and Psychiatry and the Section of Art and Psychiatry of the World Psychiatric Association. She is also engaged in interdisciplinary research on cultural constructs of mental health and illness and curates exhibits of art brut as a vehicle for fighting stigma. Hans-Otto Thomashoff was born in Germany and lives in Vienna. He is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, art historian and author of fiction and non-fiction books. He has been curator of several art exhibitions highlighting the connection between the psyche and art as well as president of the section of Art and Psychiatry of the World Psychiatric Association and advisory committee member of the Sigmund Freud Foundation, Vienna.

A must-read for anyone interested in the body-centered movement in psychotherapy. The Hakomi Method integrates the use of mindfulness, nonviolence, meditation, and holism into a highly original amalgam of therapeutic techniques. Hakomi work incorporates the idea of respect for the wisdom of each individual as a living organic system, organizing matter and energy to maintain its goals and identity. It is written with clarity, humor, and simplicity. Sure to inspire and give insight to both therapists and laypersons.

At the Interface of Transactional Analysis, Psychoanalysis, and Body Psychotherapy revolves around two intertwined themes: that of the critique and expansion of the theory and practice of transactional analysis and that of the generative richness discovered at the intersection of transactional analysis, psychoanalysis, and somatic psychotherapy. William F. Cornell explores the work of psychotherapists and counsellors through the lenses of clinical theory, practice, supervision, and ethics. The reader is thus invited into a more vivid experience of being engaged and touched by this work’s often deep, and at times difficult, intimacy. The book is grounded in the approaches of contemporary transactional analysis and psychoanalysis, using detailed case discussions to convey the flesh of these professional, and yet all too human, working relationships. Attention is paid to the force and richness of the transferential and countertransferential tensions that pervade and enliven the therapeutic process. Unconscious processes are viewed as fundamentally creative and life-seeking, with the vital functions of fantasy, imagination, and play brought into the foreground. In the era of short-term, cognitive-behavioural, solution-focused, and evidence-based models of counselling and psychotherapy, At the Interface of Transactional Analysis, Psychoanalysis, and Body Psychotherapy seeks to demonstrate the power and creativity of longer-term, dynamically oriented work.