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Psychodynamic Foundations of Bioenergetic Analysis

Experiencing, Understanding and Healing the Body and the Mind
1-1-3 Bioenergetic Analysis between Psychoanalysis and Humanistic Psychology – Looking Back / Bioenergetische Analyse zwischen Tiefenpsychologie und Humanistischer Psychologie
Volume 1 Part 1: Body-Awareness and Human Growth Chapter 1.3

Bioenergetic Analysis between Psychoanalysis and Humanistic Psychology – Looking Back

Ulrich Sollmann

The Esalen Institute in California can be seen as the birthplace of Humanistic Psychology – after all, all the participants, therapists and researchers there were concerned with self-awareness and self-expression, the search for meaning, spiritual experience and new forms of living together and social practice. The author traces the development of this in great detail and places it in the context of the period, which stands for the conceptual development and co-creative elaboration of specific psychotherapy methods like no other time. He identifies the novel approach to dealing with the problems of people seeking therapy and the resource-oriented strengthening and promotion of what today would probably be described as the inherent power of resilience as a key feature of the movement at the time. The author also addresses the interplay of psychoanalytic and humanistic-psychological perspectives in Bioenergetic Analysis and illustrates this interplay using recent developments in BA. Based on the history of its development, BA can thus be understood not only as the treatment of ill people and the strengthening of one’s own resources, but also as a social action.

Link to the original publication at Routledge

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  • The Esalen Institute in California is the birthplace and central developmental space of Humanistic Psychology. From here, the humanistic movement spread worldwide.
  • The institute offered researchers the opportunity to present their own psychological theories and practical concepts. It was also a shared space for living and experiencing, in which the ideas of all those involved were enriched by working together.
  • Many of the concepts of the pioneers working at Esalen found their way into the psychotherapeutic methods recognized or favored today. In addition, some independent methods crystallized there, such as Conversational Psychotherapy, Bioenergetic Analysis and Gestalt Therapy, which today are subsumed under the umbrella term of Humanistic Psychotherapy.
  • The focus at that time was on self-experience in the sense of self-development and the unfolding of human potential, which encouraged people in their striving for self-actualization – also in the sense of effectiveness in relation to their own living and social environment.
  • Humanistic Psychology and Humanistic Psychotherapy have an unmistakably emancipatory character.
  • Humanistic thinking models can be profitably combined with models based on biographical life experience.

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Castaneda. C. (1988). De Lehren des Don Joan [Original title: The Teachings of Don Juan]. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch.

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Geuter, U. (2019). Praxis Körperpsychotherapie [Body-Psychotherapy Practice]. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer.

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Rinpoche, S. (2004). Das tibetische Buch vom Leben und vom Sterben [The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying]. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer.

Rogers, C.R. (1973 [1961]). Entwicklung der Persönlichkeit. Psychotherapie aus der Sicht eines Therapeuten [Original title: On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy (1961)]. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

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Examples of Underground Newspapers

Cosmic Paper, periodical publication, Amsterdam.

IT, periodical publication, London.

Kommune I, sources for communal research, Berlin.

New Society, periodical publication, London.

Ulrich Sollmann
Ulrich Sollmann

Ulrich Sollmann, graduate social scientist (German diploma), bioenergetic analyst (CBT/supervisor), Gestalt psychotherapist, executive coach in business and politics, author and...

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