Tag: orgasm

Trauma releasing exercises

I am just back from the three-day introductory training in David Berceli‘s Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE). These exercises and Berceli’s work are well worth knowing. Surprisingly enough, there is no Wikipedia article on Berceli and his work. The article on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) does not mention it either, nor somatic approaches to PTSD at all, even though these have been about for a long time and must in any case be more effective than the “recognized” approaches, CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) and medication.

Berceli (as far as I can see) takes his basic model of the somatic effects of trauma from the work of Peter Levine; in any case the models are very similar. To summarize, the basic idea is that the human animal has (for some reason; we shall come onto this) suppressed a natural response to coping with stress, which needs to be reactivated for healing to occur. However, the two differ considerably in terms of methodology. Levine’s approach, known as Somatic Experiencing (SE), which is quite widely practised in Europe (though not a lot in Belgium), requires exploration of the trauma and the felt sense of the body in response to it. As such, it borrows from Gendlin’s ideas on Focusing and more generally is, it seems to me, within the intellectual tradition of Gestalt therapy. By way of contrast, Berceli’s approach, like most somatic psychotherapy, is more purely process-oriented. As such, it does not require or even directly encourage exploration of the traumatizing events, and particularly not by the therapist; rather, the focus is on what the body is doing in the here and now and on the ways in which the body’s natural attempts to self-regulate are hindered or can be supported. The independence of method from the client’s personal history offers some considerable advantages, since it makes possible group work and relies less on the skills of the therapist.

Berceli’s therapeutic method borrows from Bioenergetics (I may update this article when I have read his books, so check back), rather in the tradition of Alexander Lowen. Its aim is therefore to produce involuntary trembling in the body. Unlike Lowen, there is no element of talk therapy within the method, though Berceli does say that his method can be integrated within others, so leaves the door open to syncretic approaches. Significantly, however, the trembling is reinterpreted compared to the Reichian tradition, to which Lowen remained loyal. Rather than being glossed as the release of sexual/life energy held in stasis by the body, it is interpreted as the reactivation of the post-freezing response of animals described by Levine: “When it is out of danger, the animal will literally ‘shake off’ the residual effects of the immobility response and gain full control of its body. It will then return to its normal life as if nothing had happened“.[1]

Why is this response suppressed in humans? For this, Berceli seems to have no deeper or more convincing answer than does Levine: “Most human cultures tend to judge this instinctive surrender in the face of overwhelming threat as a weakness tantamount to cowardice. However, underneath this judgment lies a deep human fear of immobility. We avoid it because it is a state very similar to death. This avoidance is understandable, but we pay dearly for it.“[1] In other words, the response is suppressed by the ego under the weight of social stigma attached to it. Neither Levine, nor Berceli, as far as I can see, has (or even looks for) any evidence of this claimed stigmatization. Many bodily functions may be disrupted by trauma, but this does not mean that those functions themselves are necessarily stigmatized. Thus this appears to me not very convincing, and basically it eschews a psychoanalytic explanation of ego defenses and their role in the developmental process. There are lots of criticisms which can be easily leveled not only at the model, but also at how the practice relates to it. Most basically, the question arises as to why the practice does not endeavor to, nor succeeds, in simply reestablishing this response and allowing it subsequently to play whatever role it needs to play in the individual’s further experience. Rather it is recommended to continue the practice on an ongoing basis. It therefore does not constitute a “cure” for PTSD, but a door into another dimension of experience. Berceli explicitly encourages such an understanding, and views his work as transformative on a global scale. This is laudable and I thoroughly support it because I believe he is on to something; but it is not convincing theoretically.

The great advantage of Berceli’s exercises over classical bioenergetics (and over Reich’s simplified anatomical model of the biological basis of character formation) is that it is more anatomically informed, and results in exercises which are shorter and easier to carry out. This makes it more suitable for the problem it is intended to address, since persons suffering the physical developmental impact of childhood trauma are often limited in their range of motion. These exercises should absolutely be considered for use in all those contexts where people currently employ Lowen’s exercises (though not his whole framework of Bioenergetic Analysis, which he himself acknowledged did not have the clinical success he hoped for) and its derivates, such as Osho’s active meditations. Because Berceli’s exercises directly solicit and progressively release tensions in the hip adductors, iliopsoas and muscles of the pelvic floor, that is, in all of the major muscles primarily involved in the orgastic response, and they are more easily taught and experienced than existing alternatives, they seem to me the basis for a more effective practice which clients will better be able to follow and stick to (they of course do not substitute for other exercises used in group therapy the purpose of which is rather to generate than to release tensions, which will then be released in other ways).

The other great advantage is that the method can be employed in a very wide range of contexts, from schools to palliative care, contexts in which bioenergetics or anything else “explicitly” psychotherapeutic would have no chance of penetrating. It does not need and does not really have a unifying discourse, which minimizes resistance. People are willing to try it out who would never go near (or for that matter be able to afford) a psychotherapist, and stick with it because, after all, it is only their body doing what it wants to do, and it is hard to be against that.

On the other hand it would at least seem not to be a complete system for spiritual liberation in the sense we derive ultimately from Reich. Berceli applies his technique way beyond the boundaries of PTSD, presumably because people have reported positive effects in those contexts, and has some awareness of the endemic and embedded nature of societal trauma, but the need for wide appeal seems to prevent him from going deeply into underlying societal issues in the radical tradition of much psychoanalytic thought. I am not saying this is a bad choice. Perhaps it is an excellent one. But ultimately, personally and at societal level, one does need to go there. Refusing to do so will always limit the benefits that can be attained.

What Berceli’s discourse seems to me to lack is an understanding that the disruption of the trauma response is ultimately due to the fact that social experience, being so far from the natural state of man, continually regenerates trauma. On top of distorting ego development, social experience also acts in the present. Our shared cognitive models of the world and the human need for relationship continually pull us back to a depressed, unhealthy state, and would do so even if all “residues” of specific trauma were somehow dissolved. We touch here on the manner in which Berceli’s approach is most fundamentally incomplete. It is essentially solipsistic, and presupposes, ultimately as a matter of ideology, the ability of the individual body to regenerate in the absence of regeneration of the collective body and the social tissues, which although they are just as ossified as the somatic tissues, are not directly brought into vibration by the practice. This cannot work. An interpersonal dimension of therapy and practice is absolutely indispensable if we are to begin to reprogram the social mechanisms which propagate and perpetuate trauma.

So I guess that makes me a big fan and a big critic at the same time. However I will do and use the exercises and I recommend them to you to.

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[1] See http://www.traumahealing.com/somatic-experiencing/art_chapter1.html

Reich’s economic model of psychosomatics (4 – a reappraisal)

In my previous articles on the development of Reich’s thinking*, I have explained how his inquiry into Freud’s libido theory eventually led to his positing an equation between somatic and psychic states, an identity which I believe has been very therapeutically fruitful.

Reich of course went on to engage in work of a much more (some would no doubt say “even more”) speculative character, in which he sought to identify the energy present in orgasm with other energies physically present in the cosmos. From our modern perspective, this effort seems very strange, and to many of Reich’s admirers it is no doubt an embarrassment.

Bernd Laska’s biography helps us somewhat to see the chain of reasoning from Reich’s own perspective, and thus more sympathetically, but it remains evident that Reich in his later period wandered far from scientific method and truth, and one cannot help asking what these later developments imply for the scientific validity of his earlier orgasm theory.

And it seems to me that there is indeed a major flaw embedded in the earlier theory, which does not undermine its therapeutic validity but did lead both to the raft of later speculations and to a certain alienation from authentic sexual experience.

Reich’s error seems to me simple: he confused correlation with causation. Continue reading “Reich’s economic model of psychosomatics (4 – a reappraisal)”

The psychopathology of sexual response

18 Jul 2007

I have climbed another mountain.

Reich’s critique of Freud, though apparently unknown in mainstream discussion of the Freudian legacy to Western thought, is poignant. Freud made a pact with the devil: although he knew, he did not say; and as a result his theories are distorted ones, they are half-truths, packaged to take account of the world into which they were born. Although aware of the origins of neuroses in childhood sexual development, and how social conditioning removed spontaneous behavior, he nonetheless accepted that sexuality was dangerous and needed to be channeled into more socially “acceptable” forms of behavior. He called this “sublimation”, and for him, this was a natural stage of adult development. It was not a pathology.

Reich called his bluff. He stated that a fully satisfying genital sexual life and the absence of neuroses were two sides of the same coin. And although Reich has been rebuffed and ridiculed – and quite rightly when it came to his later attempts to create a theory of everything – his position has also deeply affected modern attitudes to sexuality in the West, whereby a woman is not quite normal unless she has three orgasms before breakfast.

But – with all respect to Reich – this focus on genitality is insane. It is just another artefact of the warped world into which both Freud’s and Reich’s theories were born.

Experiencing deep and full orgasmic pleasure does indeed characterize the natural state of man and woman. But it is a consequence of psychic health, a manifestation, it is not a recipe for achieving it or a cosmic status symbol.

In The Function of the Orgasm, Reich argued that orgasm serves to regulate bodily energies, essentially to release energies which otherwise would become stocked in the body and generate neuroses and psychosomatic phenomena.

Now, this is partly true, but it is not the end of the story.

Reich’s account of the orgasm appears to exclude that it may, itself, be used as a mechanism, perhaps even the most powerful mechanism, to rigidify the body and freeze neuroses into place. But a moment’s reflection suffices to see that this is how sexuality functions for many people. Such sexuality is labeled morbid and dismissed, it is not “real” and “healthy” sexuality and hence it is not what Reich is talking about. But this misses the point.

Now, I fully admit to being an amateur with only a limited background on these things, but I still think I’m on to something here. So here is my conjecture on the psychopathology of sexual response. Of course we now know much more than Reich or Freud ever could about the reality of human sexual behavior and it is time to retheorize psychotherapy based on this knowledge. Reich’s theories are based on a very crude metaphysics of bodily energy.

I believe that when our sense of self is under stress, the primary channel of psychosomatic repression is genital. Such repression may manifest itself in the sexual response – whether it is impotence or (exclusively in men of course) “premature” ejaculation. But it also manifests itself in sexual behavior, both direct behavior (what we are accustomed to calling “perversions”, though it is an obviously unsatisfactory term) and in sublimated behavior patterns such as violence, anger and so on, as well as in bodily phenomena playing a role in the ontogenesis of illness. The omnipresence of degraded genital sensitivity, in both sexes, which I have been able to observe in my own experience is ample indication that the primary locus of psychosomatic repression is the pelvic floor. I also believe that most therapists working in the Reichian tradition would agree with this and operate accordingly, but at an intellectual level, as a system, I am unconvinced that the Reichian account itself is complete or coherent.

A satisfying genital sexual life (as, presumably, self-reported) may even have nothing to do with the maintenance of mental health, it may, once again, simply be a manifestation of a satisfying emotional life, which is the primary cause of partial neurotic resolution, and indeed this seems rather more likely.

So the genitals are a battleground. On the one hand, the wounded sense of self directs energy against them and seeks release through them; on the other, reality intrudes by this channel too in the erotic response.

It is important to realize that what we are talking about here is “normal” sexuality, not (only) morbidity. In other words, it is the sexuality which Reich viewed as homomorphic to mental and physical health. Freud argued for sublimation, and Reich for dissipation of sexual drives. But the reality is that the sexual drive which Reich wished to dissipate through the orgasm, is itself stubbornly neurotic and the remedy Reich prescribed merely anchors this neurosis. If it does anything else, then that is merely by chance. It is entirely possible that it is better to dissipate certain energies in this way than to channel and manifest them in available alternative ways, although I am not sure about this because the genitals are at the origin of many psychopathologies and the apparent release may therefore be only temporary – moreover, sex typically involves two people and this release may therefore be, and probably often is, at the expense of the other. In any case, this does not by itself determine that Reich has described healthy sexual behavior. Of course, Reich’s findings are indelibly influenced by the clinical context of his and Freud’s work, even if he went on to well understand, in his most important work on child psychology, the social generation of psychopathology which determined the passing on of neuroses from one generation to the next.

When we observe sexual neurosis, we have not merely to prescribe genital release as a means of managing it; we have to look, in full Reichian logic, at what is generating this neurosis. And what is generating it is the wounded sense of self. In order to heal this, we need to step out of this subjectivity and observe objectively.

Here, sexuality can help, but only if we let it. Instrumentalizing sexuality closes all possibility that it will awaken us. It is merely another manifestation of the defense mechanisms that the wounded self has mastered. Rather, we must seek to deinstrumentalize it, just to experience it, to allow it to surprise us, to ensure it is placed firmly outside of our control so that it may be a gateway to challenge our self-construction and make us confront the fact that reality is other. And this is not only true of sex; it is true of all sensory phenomena. They are either a way out or a way in; and we must make them a way in. When our constructed self, our psychophysical armor, is permanently exposed to contradiction and cannot escape, only then are we free of it and living authentically.

I recognize that some may find this account of sexuality too remote from their own experience. Given that real sexuality has a dual character as both affirmation and effacement of the self, how to enjoy it fully in the present moment and not at some irrealistic future date? Indeed, may not the self-affirmatory aspects of sexuality, and not only the self-effacing ones, have a true therapeutic or energy-management function and value, in addition to being fun? Yes. Certainly. I also reject an ascetic view according to which only sex according to the purest (imagined) tantric canon has any value. Sex is fun, and I revel in all its variety and the humanity of it (though I certainly do not condone actions which are unilateral and predatory). But this is a subject for another blog entry.