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This site promotes the teaching of structural psychology and structural psychotherapy strategy based on ethology, ethno- and anthropology, psychoanalysis and body-psychotherapy knowledges. It is a new well-founded approach for the treatment of autism, psychosis, addictions and other eating disorders, heavy neuroses, and sexual or relational disorders.
Structural psychotherapy is intended to help the individual to get rid of the emotional, relational and motivation disturbances, by freeing unwanted residues of the past, and especially rebuilding the psychic skeleton by re-enacting the essential archaic imprints, restoring the life force and the integrity of the psyche.
Individuals in need of therapy may find today many different techniques. However, these techniques seldom give permanent results and heavy troubles tend to persist in the daily life and manifest as depression, addictions or drug compulsive use, eating disorders, emotional difficulties, and relational or sexual troubles.
Structural therapy is intended to tackle these difficulties, not by a specific technique, but by a whole strategy based on a thorough and consistent theory of the unconscious, and a validated common experience of the unconscious structure: how it builds up, how it functions, how it may have been attacked and checked in its development, how it tries and adapt to the environment, and further how to make out its defects from the records of the archaic past and how to cure them.
This strategy procures first a relational base where are provided safety, response, clarification, depth of understanding, and guidelines to help the psyche understand itself and how to unfold its archaic history. The need for emotional release and tensions easing is met. The need for a true mirror is met and so is the necessity of accepting a return to the struggle and wounds of infancy. The need for the help of group dynamic and work on the body patterns (release and retrieval, and integration) has to be understood.
At the same time, the necessary ingredients for the fundamental and essential structuring of the psyche are provided, so that spontaneous (re-)imprinting may occur, procuring enough strength for development to resume, and the individual develops progressively an emotional aptitude, an independance of learning, acting and thinking, progresses towards less pain, less anxiety and a less defensive attitude. When a more or less complete archaic restructuring has taken place, the process of maturity, responsibility, autonomy of decision and choice, genital sex and parenting, individual and group motivations can be tackled and integrated.
In psychoanalysis, we do not speak of "healing" since the process is in principle analytic and discursive and the outcome may not be an improvement of health, even if some appreciable reduction of anxiety often follows. This is consistent with the theory since analysis in itself is not seen as a mean of getting rid of suffering, but as a mean of getting an interpretation of one's behaviour and possibly more insight into oneself. In the standard analytic cure, one is limited to what unconscious domain can be attained with words, which we know is the secondary register in a direct way, and the primary register in the indirect way of fantasies (by inference). The originary register cannot be tackled but only by guesswork and cannot be worked on for lack of adequate methods.
From structural psychology we learn that severe problems have their roots in the originary register and stem from structural defects and faulty imprinting. Provided we have the tools to access and investigate that register and also to mend the defects crystallised therein, we may speak of 'healing' in the sense of repairing a system. Structural theory guides us in building up the strategy, methods and tools necessary for assessment, investigation and repair.
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Severe disorders are here defined as structural defects, i.e. distorsions of the elemetary reflexes of the childbirth complex, the bonding complex, and the later separation complex, which we know are crystallised, persistent, permanent and active throughout life. [See Severe Disorders.]
From the theory of structuring, we see that we have to:
• restore vitality in the body
• restore functions which have been prevented to develop or damaged
• find ways of access to the archaic history (especially to originary register)
• release archaic tensions and help stalled cycles to progress
• enact imprints which have never been made or re-enact aberrant imprints and replace them by sound ones
• meet archaic needs which have heretofore never been met
• progressively meet with a set of natural references pertinent to infant and child life, and later to adult life
Vitality is impeded in the body for many reasons. All structural attack leaves behind a lack of vitality, either from non-initialisation (french: 'forclusion' = not occured) or from ulterior inhibition. Vitality comes from the therapist through transference in special body-work sessions. The vital influx has to flow from therapist to client to ensure that the process is going the right way.
Sensations come from motion. Retrieval of vitality generally brings back sensory sensitivity and feelings. Sensitivity may amount to almost zero in most severe disorders; it will not build or rebuild before vitality has begun restoration.
Reactions also come from sensations, and will come again with vitality. But they also need to be accepted, and since they may be very strong when even a small amount of vitality is restored, work on their acceptability has to take place in parallel with vitalisation before results on this side begin to appear. This is why most of the time vitality has been inhibited: reactions may have been felt too strong and may have been rejected by the environment (parents and educators). [See Theory of the body.]
Links are binds in the psychic system which convey information both ways between the main subsystems. Usually, these links are either attacked or are self-ruptured for tentative life-saving in early life. They are the main cause of later deficiency. Ruptured links between psychic functions are the sure signs of archaic trauma and manifest as a division of self, a loss of feelings and connection to actuality, and avoidance schemes of all strong situations (genital sex, orgasm, struggle, loss and separation, etc.)
Basic links which we seek to restore are:
• link between mind (abstract life), emotions (feeling life) and the sensorial-reactional apparatus to retrieve the awareness of what the body lives (perception and needs)
• link between words and other systems: reactional, instinctual (innate, originary); emotional (primary); and sentiment (secondary); - amounts to rebuild the reactional and the emotional functions - brings the actuality and meaning of the archaic drama
• link between motor-sensory system and reactional system - brings vitality
Archaic history is the pre-verbal and pre-fantasy life, and therefore recorded only in attitudes, reactions, repression of reactions, tensions of effort to adapt to situations, avoidance reactions, retractions, inhibitions, amnesied and 'encysted' or 'encapsulated' (shelled in) events (the standard way to survive trauma). To each archaic event corresponds a system of tensions (psychic tensions => nervous tension fluxes => permanent muscular tensions) and avoidances. All these systems can be reactivated through careful specific transference re-enacting and through specific body techniques. Each release of one of these systems re-enacts the original scene (re-living of the original history or 'ab-reaction') and conveys with it the truth about what has happened. Truth brings consistency to the self-knowledge which is necessary for well-being, reassurance that one is not 'mad' and that definite events have produced in the past the anomaly one bears, brings slowly in turn a progressive integration giving more strength and confidence.
This process of retrieval and release can only be done by re-living the past, since the complete dynamic release of the tensional systems is wanted for the archaic actuality to manifest (analysis and understanding do not produce this effect for lack of charge, release and discharge cycles). Retrieval and freeing of the past events needs full body charge, full reactions, and the subsequent full completion of the release cycles, which can happen only after a suficient re-vitalising of the body has taken place.
Most generally, one will discover that one (or more) of the imprints has not happened, or has been aberrant. Therefore, the therapy strategy is oriented towards re-enacting the basic imprints. First the transferential regression work is guided so that the client returns to the period of the imprint. Then it is directed so that the critical period will open anew. Then, when the archaic scene is re-lived, the therapist acts the needed impact, being not just a substitute of the former parent, but being the real needed parent of that particular imprint at that definite time. In this fashion, the fundamental reflexes manifest and replay with good chances of adequate structuring.
When there had been an absent of erroneous imprint in the first place, it takes some time of transferential erasing before the imprint of the correct type can be enacted.
Of course, most of the work is directed towards the completion of the three root imprints: vitality, bonding and symbiosis, and dissolution of symbiosis, in that order, since without that core skeleton, no development of the more advanced functions can happen.
Once vitality gives rise to reactions, and reactions to re-living the archaic history, and release gives clues of the original drama, thorough references concerning the archaic events are given to the person, so that she can make sense of that original drama and put it into perspective, since otherwise the discovery may be too shattering to be accepted.
This knowledge of the archaic and the traumatic perinatal life comes from the therapist through transference, which is ensured to flow in the right direction, i.e. from therapist to client.
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