Preface to the English Edition
The Dimensions of the Organism
Social System, Individual System, and Psyche
The System of the Dimensions of the Organism (SDO)
The Epistemological and Ethical Framework of Psychotherapeutic Knowledge
PART I. THE ORGANISM IN THE FAR EAST:
IN SEARCH OF THE UNIVERSE THAT MANIFESTS
IN THE ORGANISM
1. Asana and Pranayama of Hatha Yoga
A Search that Involves the Totality of the Organism
Ecstasy Is Born through the Mastery of the Multiplicity that Flourishes in Each One of Us
The Yogi’s Knowledge of the Body
The Pranayama as the Foundational Link between Mind and Body
Internal Respiration or the Dynamics of Prana
2. Chinese and Taoist Refinements
The Metaphysics of the Tao Are Associated to the Notions of the Chi, the Yin, and the Yang
Acupuncture: Influencing the Deep Dynamics of the Organism through Touch and Movement
The Sage Acts in Accord with Nature
Religious Taoism and the Development of the Martial Arts
The Arrival of Buddhism in China
The Techniques of the Martial Arts: Paradoxical Respiration, Punch, and Grounding
Final Comments on Prana and Chi
PART II. STARTING WITH THE CERTITUDES OF THE SOUL AND ENDING WITH THE AMBIVALENCES OF THE MIND
3. About Plato: Idealism and Body Psychotherapy
Idealism, Body, and Soul at the Dawn of Science
Differences between Mind and Soul
Idealism and Absolute Truths in Body Psychotherapy
A Passionate and Profoundly Emotional Experience Is a Way to Taste the World of Ideas
Must a Treatment Create Harmony in the Organism?
The Political, Moral, and Sexual Implications of Idealism
Are Those Who Condemn Socrates Necessarily Ignorant and Wicked Citizens?
Discussion: The Last of the Great Teachers Creates the Academy of Masters
4. René Descartes: The Body and the Soul of Scientists
An Epistemological Undertaking
From Athens to Amsterdam: One Maritime City to Another
The Body in the Renaissance: From Empiricism to Science
From the Causal System to Parallelism
Rules for the Direction of the Mind of Scientific Philosophers
Thoughts Are the Source of Science
Thought According to Descartes
Consciousness and Co-consciousness
The Soul as a Boat that Tries to Survive an Endless Storm
The Psychologist Is Not Competent in Biology and the Biologist Is Not Competent in Psychology
The Body as an Infernal Prison
5. Spinoza’s Parallelist Systemics Situates the Mind in a Lay Universe
Spinoza’s Theory on Nature, Society, and the Individual
The Notion of Complexity in Spinoza’s System
Mental Structure, Spontaneous Illusions, and Projections
The Inherent Perversions of the Mind
Imagination, Reason, and Intuition
The Regulation of the Organism by Social Dynamics
6. Hume and Kant: A Mind without a Soul, without a Body, and without Direction
David Hume: A Student in Crisis
The Treatise of a Tumultuous Youth
Propensities, Instincts, and Passions
The Basic Ethics of All Intellectual Inquiries: Socrates, Spinoza, Hume, Kant
The Critique of Pure Reason Resonates with An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Conscious Thoughts as Virtual Organismic Phenomena and Unconscious Memories of Abuse
Plasticity and Constraints of the Mental System
PART III. THE ORGANISM OF THE BIOLOGISTS
7. From Evolutionary Theory to Artificial Intelligence
The Gradual Differentiation of Organisms Has Generated Psychological Dimensions
The Mind Is a Constituent of the Development of the Organism’s Complexity
Time Is a Factor that Allows the Essence of Beings to Change: The Multiple Layers of a Slow History
Lamarck Establishes Biology by Showing that the Essence of Nature is Dynamic
Situating Biology: From Buffon to Lamarck
The Psychophysiology of the Organism
From Propensity to Inclination
The Jungle: A Particularly Inspiring Museum of Natural History
The Mind: Somewhere between Unknown Forces and Biology
Darwin’s Passion for the Evolution of the Species
Saint-Hilaire against Cuvier: On the Degree of Coherence of Biological Architectures
A Few Key Concepts from Artificial Intelligence and the Neurosciences
Introduction: Physiology and Psychotherapy
The Internal Environment, Homeostasis, and the Social Regulation of Cells
The Internal Environment According to Bernard
Physiology, Homeostasis, and Mood
The System of Vegetative Regulation and Affects
The Vegetative Neurohormonal Regulatory System of the Organs and Affects
The Psychophysiology of Stress
Uvnäs-Moberg and Oxytocin: The Axis of Affection
The Myth of an Emotional Brain
Is a Lesion in the Brain the Direct Cause of Behavioral Disorders?
Stress and the Cognitive Approach Proposed by Fradin
Discussion: Hume’s Propensity Revisited
Interacting with One’s Environment, Calibrating a Propensity, and Calibrating the Self
The Parallelistic Dynamics of Mood Disorders
The Shape of the Body = The Shape of the Soul
The Beauty of the Body = The Beauty of the Soul
Linear Approaches to Emotional Expression
A Human Being Needs to Hope that What He Perceives Has a Meaning He Can Understand
The Relative Robustness of Results Confirming the Relevance of Linear Models of Emotional Expression
10. Spirituality, Hypnosis, and Energy
Energy = The Quantity of Activity
Newton: I Need Theoretical Variables to Describe the Dynamics of the Universe
Imagination and Intellection in Newton’s Day
Energy and Psychological Representations
11. The First Methods of Relaxation
Schultz and Autogenic Training
The Link between Thoughts and Body Are Nonconscious but Manageable
A Practical Introduction to Autogenic Training
Jacobson: Progressive Relaxation
The Consciousness of the Gesture according to James
Dynamic Relaxation in Psychotherapy
12. Organismic Gymnastics: From Elsa Gindler to Moshe Feldenkrais
Introduction: Gymnastics and Organismic System
The Organism Reduced to the Needs of Gymnastics
Gindler’s Berlin: How to Find the Gymnastic One Needs
The Organismic Gymnastic of Gindler
Gurdjieff: Exploring Gestures that Educate and Calibrate Organismic Regulation Systems
Introduction: The Posture as an Interface between the Organism and its Social Ecology
The Floors of the Postural Construction
Basic Posture and the Setting of Psychotherapy
The Notion of Postural Repertoire
The Ideal Type and Muscle Tone
The Logic of the Body and the Logic of the Organs: Symmetries and Asymmetries
The Return of the Venous Blood in the Legs: Behavior and Physiology
PART V. THE PSYCHE AS REGULATOR OF THE ORGANISM
14. The Origins of Psychoanalysis and Freud’s First Topography
A Nonconscious Unconscious and the Birth of German Experimental Psychology
Introspection and Experimental Psychology
The Unconscious Inferences of von Helmholtz and Wundt
Principles of the First Topography
Freud’s First Topography: The Unconscious, the Preconscious, and the Conscious
The Regulatory Systems of the Psyche that Create Psychopathology
The Nonconscious and the Unconscious
Neurosis as the Content of the First Topography
Breuer, the Cathartic Method, and the “Talking Cure”
The Causes of Neurosis: Initial Trauma or Blockage of the Accommodation?
Free Associations as the Basic Method of the First Topography
The Talking Cure of Breuer and Freud
The Power of the Mind on the Body
From Dream Analysis to Behavior Analysis
Gestured Thoughts and Spoken Thoughts
15. From the Dynamics of the Libido to the Second Topography and the Death Instinct
Libido Disorders Create Neurosis
The Necessity to Create a Second Topography
Why Does an Organism Need Nightmares?
16. Psychoanalysis and the Body
The First Attempts to Include Considerations of the Body into Psychoanalytical Treatments
Adler and the Functional Identity of the Body and the Soul
Spielrein: Psychoanalysis, Cognitive Psychology, and Nonverbal Communication
The Active Psychoanalytic Technique of Ferenczi
The Creative Friendship between Fenichel and Reich
A Friendship between Students: The Seminar on Sexuality
Reich: Student and Then Companion of Fenichel
Berlin 1923–1929: The Psychoanalytic Clinic of Berlin Meets Gindler’s School of Gymnastics
Reich in Berlin (1930–1933): Communism and Sexual Liberation, Character Analysis and the Body
PART VI. THE ORGANISMIC APPROACH OF WILHELM REICH AND THE SYSTEMIC PSYCHOSOMATICS OF OTTO FENICHEL
Oslo: Reich Creates a New Form of Therapy
Reich Turns His Back on Psychotherapy to Help the Organism Find Its Pulsation
The Vegetative Dimension Animates and Coordinates the Psyche and the Body
18. Psychosomatics and Orgonomy
Fenichel’s Last Formulations on the Coordination of Mind, Affects, Physiology, and Body (1939–1946)
Integration of the Physiological Dynamics in Psychotherapy
From New York to Maine (1939–1957): Reich Discovers Orgone
Hope Is for Tomorrow, When a True Democracy Will Become Possible
Orgonomic Therapy and Psychotherapy
Putting the Body and the Psyche in the Organism Again
The Development of Body Psychotherapy
The 1960s Attempts to Defend Reich’s Proposition
The 1970s: Body Psychotherapy as Consumer Products
The 1990s: Body Psychotherapy as an Emerging Field
Psychotherapy or Body Psychotherapy?
Braatøy: The Couch and the Massage Table
Bülow-Hansen: A Psychomotor Exploration of Emotional Embodiment
Lowen and Bioenergetic Analysis
The Establishment of Bioenergetic Analysis
A General Critique of Lowen’s Bioenergetics
A Few Examples of Issues Regularly Raised by Body Psychotherapists in 2010
PART VII. NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
20. Filmed Interactions: The Behavior of an Invisible Visible Body
Introduction: A New Way to Approach the Organism
Behavior Can Adapt Itself Simultaneously to a Multitude of Heterogeneous Stimulations
A Systemic View of Interaction
Nonverbal Communication, or the Body in Communication
Constructing a Representation of Body Communication
The Nonconscious Regulations of Muhammad Ali
Self-Regulation and the Interactive System
Actions that Simultaneously Participate in One’s Self-Regulation and That of the Other
Transference and Recurrent Regulation
Individual and Dyadic Homeostasis
Introducing the Notion of Practices
22. Downing and Integrative Body Psychotherapy in
California: A Golden Age for Creative Psychotherapists
A Body Psychotherapy that Seeks to Overcome the Controversies between Schools
The Analysis of Habits by Merleau-Ponty
Micro-Analysis of the Face and Body Psychotherapy
Micro-Practices and Representations
The Emotions as Indicators of Certain Modes of Organismic Functioning
The Emerging Map of Future Body Psychotherapy
23. Summary: Toward a Form of Psychotherapy that Integrates Nonconscious Practices
The Limits of Dividing Reality into Distinct Realms of Knowledge
The System of the Dimensions of the Organism: A Summary of Some of the Implications of This Model
Speculative, Empirical, Clinical, and Experimental Scientific Research
The Epistemological Status of Research in Psychotherapy