For an event to happen, it requires multiple causes that made it possible. The more we seek to find the origins of the relatively simple techniques of body psychotherapy, the more we find that they arose at many crossroads at several moments in history. Body psychotherapy is a kind of “reduction” (in the sense of the culinary arts) of many elements that have found their place as sediments in the spirit of an epoch. This plethora of notions was like dust suspended in air, which everyone breathes without knowing it. It is in this mindset that I will now situate a few movements that developed between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. They are part of the particles of knowledge breathed in quite automatically by the insatiable curiosity of the first psychoanalysts, like Freud and Jung, as well as the first psychotherapists who were intrigued by the relation between mind and movement, especially Ferenczi, Groddeck, Fenichel, and Reich.
I already reviewed the grand theories that served as the frame for the emergence of psychotherapy. There also exist myriad movements that left a mark on a generation of practitioners without leaving lasting traces in history. It is impossible to understand the literature on mind and body discussed in this volume without opening a discussion on the apparently peripheral movements and issues that nevertheless had an important influence on the practices that form a kind of geological layer on which other layers arose. Many ideas and methods presently used in psychotherapy were formed in this incubator. As an example, I take the ones that marked the emergence of the body psychotherapies, but today’s psychotherapists are inspired by more recent analogous theories. Thus, the first decade of the twenty-first century is distinguished by the use of the Buddhist notion of mindfulness in cognitive therapy (see Kabat-Zinn, 1990, and Siegel, 2007; examples of practitioners who integrate a similar approach in body psychotherapy are Rytz, 2009, and Weiss, 2009).
The spectacular advances in science in the European civilization during the nineteenth century also upended the intellectual movements that were not scientific. Up until the first French Revolution, the philosophers of the Renaissance and of the Age of Enlightenment defended the existence of science while battling against religion and political prejudice, both hostile to science. With Hegel’s proposition at the time of Napoleon and Lamarck, spiritual and scientific visions interact more with each other. An increasing number of researchers tried to synthesize beliefs, spiritual traditions, and knowledge. This context supported the emergence of diverse ideologies (notably certain forms of colonialism, communism, eugenics, and fascism), which then influenced the development of certain scientific theories. This was particularly true for the research that focused on the relation between the body and the mind. For example, it is impossible to take up the development of these disciplines that emerged parallel to psychoanalysis without clarifying the new forms of racism and spirituality that came about during this period. Being unable to treat such a vast topic in this book, I content myself to mention its importance. I will focus on those subjects that had a more explicit impact on the literature of body psychotherapy.
These approaches remain structured as schools which defend a particular vision. The quality of the education and training provided by such schools depends mostly on a genealogy of masters that have led to the creation of such schools (see Comba and Fleury, 1987).