PRINCIPLES OF BODY–PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology-founded approach for the treatment of autism, psychosis, addictions, heavy neuroses, and sexual or relational disorders.

Principles

Cycles

Release & Integration

Psychoses & Body

Body Psychotherapy

Body & Myths

Principles

Vitality

Principle of vitality

The fundamental principle of all life is: intrinsic spontaneous animation or mobilisation of beings.

Corollary

Animation brings in turn perception (active: from the motion of others being and vigilance or focusing) perception brings reaction sensations (active: from self-motion) sensations bring reaction animation (active: from inner motivations) animation brings actions encounters encounters bring confrontation, tensions, ultimately release of tensions and experience, then meaning

We use here five postulates.

Postulate

Vitality is psychic

i.e. has its origin beyond physics (thermal, gravity, and electric, atomic and nuclear) and chemistry (chemical bond), and beyond biology (biochemical activity). Biological activity is itself psychic (i.e. there is an elementary psyche in every cell, driving its birth, life and death cycle and giving it its vitality). The three planes of activity are in strong interaction with one another, but distinct. They obey each to specific laws which are not analogs (theorem of complexology).

Figure Body_1

Perception

Postulate

All perception comes from motion - active seeking of specific perceptions is the basic process of life - this seeking comes from inner motivations that are private to the psyche.

Perception is self-induced by an active process, either inner motion or motivation, or from external motion which is seeked by inner motivation.

Motivation

There are various levels of motivation, such as individual survival schemes (safety, food and water seeking), species survival schemes (reproduction, aggregation), individual development schemes (experiential growth) and collective development schemes (society growth). Although some drives may appear in a naive view as purely chemical, ethology has gone a long way to prove that they all have an anterior psychic component. It appears that this ethological view is true also for elementary animals, such as worms (multicells) and even monocellular beings. We may thus infer that

Postulate

All life forms have inner motivation schemes on the psychic level. Ultimately, all motivations have a psychic component.

At the beginning of psychoanalysis, one thought that the wanted state (stable state) was that of no-tensions and no activity (the so-called homeostatic principle). That idea came from the physics of closed systems obeying the principle of energy minimum (first principle) or dissipation minimum (second principle). However, live beings do not obey physics principles (a theorem of complexology), and furthermore are not closed but open systems which must obey a principle of teleology. Live systems defy the first and even the second principle of physics. They function on different laws. Ethology and psychology show that the basic state of a being is activity (even during sleep), having by the way various levels, and having various states depending of the moment and cyclic in kind. Activity has a few essential purposes: maintaining perception and thus interaction with the environment being ready for action or reaction at all times creating tensions and the constant need for their release seeking how to release tensions of whatever kind in whatever ways processing all experience, giving meaning to it and memorising its meaning for future needs

For our point of view here, only one sort of motivation is sufficient:

Postulate

All motivation comes from inner tensions (psychic) having a correspondance in body tensions (physiologic, somatic, muscular). Seeking a release of these tensions is the elementary motivation of all life forms.

Now, tensions may pertain to the present: fear of a danger, looking for water, etc.; or to the past: avoiding authorities, for instance. The last seem to some extent to be specific to the human beings and to a much lesser extent to animals (although synaptic plasticity and rigidity is one form of memory that all animals have in common). Is is due to the ability of memorising events not only on the biological level (by synaptic rigidity/plasticity) but on the psychic level (long term memory, deep structure memorising and consolidation). For what we are concerned here, the greater part of our activity is seeking the release of tensions crystalised from past events, a process we call here progress, freeing or deconstruction. The remaining underlying tension is that of healing that past (progress to the point of the dissolution of those tensions) and developing beyond the healing purpose.

Postulate

Nearly all tensions we seek to release are residual crystallised tensions from events that we did not have the ability to dissolve in the past.

They have four layers: one is the original system of tensions of the past event , the second is the system of tensions used to keep the emergence of the event in control, the third is the effort to behave socially. The fourth underlying system of tensions is the individual necessity to heal and grow.

There is a strong correspondance between the psychic tensions (psychic level), the nervous tensions (neurophysiological level) and the muscular tensions (somatic level). It amounts to almost an identity, although they are obviously distinct, act in distinct planes and have distinct specific laws (a theorem of complexology).

Thus, all our life is driven by a 'necessity to grow', but that necessitates the release of our active past which is therefore our main task. This brings the necessity to seek situations or build up situations where we shall have the opportunity to try and release our tensions of the past. Until there are no more tensions of the past in our psyche and body counter part. Then we may be free of past influence and ready for more advanced experiencing. (The active past is that of undissolved tensions.)

Tensions release

Now, tensions do not release in a continuous way but by alternance of release active states and tranquil relaxed states (called ergotropic) which obey a cyclic law. We experience states of relaxation where the tensions are in the background (probaby in the psychic plane) and do not activate the body which is in the neurovegetative vagotonic state (parasympathetic active or PNS state). In this state, psychic tensions produce thoughts, fantasies, day dreams and dreams. The body has a reduced sensitivity to external stimuli (without reactions) and enhanced sensitivity to internal stimuli which are however subliminal. In the active state, the body is activated (sympatheticotonic, orthosympathetic active or SNS state) and its degree of reactivity depends on its charge. It has states of directed activity under the control of will, and states of uncontrolled activity under the control of instinctual drives. Both states compete to have the control of the body. The will-controlled states are however, under the pressure of the instinctual system, and mainly the tentative resolution of the archaic tensions. The instinctual drives, apart from basic survival appetites, may be distinguished as: pressing all tensions to seek release either in reaction/crisis form, in emotion form, or in sentiment form possibly deriving into thinking and wording (aggressive tensions, getting and rejecting) sexual drive seeking suitable partner (genital tensions) communication drive seeking suitable partner (relation tensions) growing drive, beginning with priority self-healing (agressive tensions release) i.e. freeing the archaic tensions, then seeking relief, self-integration, peace, meaning, and consciousness (development tensions)

Now as we explore in the next page, the release of tensions comes in cycles of definite form.

We may mention also the coexistence at the same time of the two neurophysiological basic states of high activity (sympathetic) and high or deep relaxation (parasympathetic) called trophotropic states. These states give a variety of body phenomena deriving from a psychic drive producing high investment of the right hemisphere and inner limbic functions known as trance states, in which usual biological law are checked and other psychic and biological laws apply, and consciousness vary from the absence of personal drives and memory to complete unconsciousness. In these states, there may happen intense release of inner structural tensions different from archaic reactions and emotions, and sundry reorganisations of the psyche.