Scientific Validation - Character Analytic Vegetotherapy Evidences

Character analytic vegetotherapy and orgonomy as a psychotherapeutic method and theory are equivivalent. Theory and method and the whole paradigma are mainly developed by Dr. Wilhelm Reich and his co-workers. Both theoretical and methodological ground can be found in the writings of Wilhelm Reich. Without hesitation his most important book in the field of psychotherapy is Character Analysis[1], which is widely used textbook all around the world in different psychotherapy training schools.

This is one of oldest psychotherapy theories and methods. At the moment it has been in existence between 70-80 years.

Character analytic vegetotherapy was first developed by W. Reich in the 1920s an 30s in Vienna and Berlin as a modification of psychoanalysis. He placed more emphasis on working with negative transference at the start of therapy and focussed on the bodily expression of emotion and character and its discrepancy with the spoken word. In 1925 Reich published "The Impulsive Character[2]" describing his work with what today would be diagnosed as patients with borderline character disorders and the need to move from symptom analysis to character analysis. Reich described the patterns of resistance in therapy as character armour and as the patients"frozen history". If a patients character armour could be reduced he would come more into contact with and give more expression to his emotions and show a better capacity for self-regulation. In 1933 he published "Character Analysis" in which he presents a character typology and describes bodily postures and muscle tension states associated with the character types. In "The Function of the Orgasm[3]" 1942 Reich took up the role of sexuality and psychosomatic responses in health and neurosis.

From 1934-39 Reich lived and worked in Oslo at the invitation of Harald Schjeldrup[4] professor in psychology at the University of Oslo. He also had contact with the psychiatrist Trygve Braatøy who published "De nervøse sinn[5]" (The nervous minds) a description of the connection between body and mind in psychiatric disorders. Another early student was the child psychiatrist Nic Waal who created a system of systematic examination called Somatic Psychodiagnosis. Today the Nic Waal Institute is one of the main training centres in child psychiatry in Norway. Bulow-Hansen the chief physiotherapist at Ullevaal hospital Oslo and student of Trygve Braatøy developed a system of therapy which had many similarities to Reich`s work and is today known as psychomotoric physiotherapy a speciality within physiotherapy. Ola Raknes another pupil of Reich founded the Forum for Character Analysis in Norway which is still active today. The forum has more recently differentiated into the forum (an organisation for character analytic therapists) and an institute for education and training. The institute offers a 4 year training, plus supervision and personal therapy for those who wish to qualify as character analytic vegetotherapists. There are today about 125 members of the forum and 35 members of the institute who are recognised as training analysts or supervisors.

The institute and education are recognised and receive financial support from the government as one of the four psychotherapy training institutes in Norway.

Character analytic vegetotherapy is a form of psychotherapy which has an awareness of bodily phenomena such as muscular activity and tension, posture, respiration and non-verbal communication. It concentrates on the interaction between the patients mental and emotional activity and the awareness of bodily phenomena. In the therapy situation the therapists awareness of his own mental and bodily phenomena is also of vital importance.

Character analytic vegetotherapy may be useful to all types of psychoneurotic and characterological disorders, psychosomatic complaints, borderline, addictive and traumatised patients, sexual dysfunction and problems with sexual orientation.

Approximately 90% of character analysts in Norway are psychologists mainly working in private practice with individual clients, the other 10% are doctors or psychiatrist some of whom work within health institutions. Some character analytic vegetotherapists work with groups often utilising music and movement and study of breathing and posture to increase body awareness and to gain insight into character structure.

1. Please provide evidence that your approach has clearly defined areas of enquiry, application, research, and practice.

Our domain is that of psychotherapy and, within that, Character analytic vegetotherapy. Within this realm we focus on how bodily phenomena can improve current psychotherapeutic techniques and understanding. By bodily phenomena we understand such phenomena as muscular activity, breathing, bodily posture, muscular tensions, the function of autonomic nervous system, energetic charge, facial expressions, non-verbal interaction etc. Furthermore we also consider interactive processes; for example, how the musculoskeletal system interfaces and influences the emotional life of a person and vice versa; or how the client and the therapist respond to each other both at physical and psychical levels.

Within this framework we work with various types of clients: psychiatric clients, borderline, traumatised and addictive clients, clients with psychosomatic symptoms, all types of psychoneurotic and characterological clients, clients who are not mentally ill or in great distress, but wish to enhance life skills, relationships, communication skills, or psychosomatic functioning.

Character analytic vegetotherapy often have an educational component when the client wishes to understand the inter-relationship between their bodily feelings, emotions, symptoms etc. This is often the case in Character analytic vegetotherapy training sessions and with specialised client groups such as performing artists or athletes.

Other client populations include people being released from hospital, accident and posttraumatic stress victims, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts and people with body image concerns such as eating disordered clients.

In all of these, Character analytic vegetotherapy principles have been applied in a large number of case studies during the last eighty years.

To answer this question correctly would include to define the concept "research". As we know this is a vast academic question, which leads to another question: what is knowledge? There are number of different theories on what is research and what is knowledge: positivistic, emperic, hermeneutic, fenomenological etc. Freuds claim was that he in the first place created a new research metod and treatment came as secondary. Is psychoanalytic method a research metod or not has been debated for the past 100 years. On the other hand it was Freuds method that created a new profession, which is today called psychotherapy. Good discussions on these subjects can be found in "International Journal of Psychotherapy" volume 5 number 2 from july 2000.

All the three Character analytic vegetotherapy institutions, which are members of the Forum are supporitng academic research projects, but do not have projects of their own. Many people having participated trainings of these and other institutions have made university dissertations for their degrees on character analytic vegetotherapy.

For us it is of central importance to participate in the scientific discourse in the field of psychotherapy. To this belongs the participation in specific professional congresses, the publication of own approaches and ideas, the cooperation with other training institutes with the aim, not only to question and debate our theoretical basis but also our practical work.

The EABP has a large bibliography of research articles. In Norway the Bergen project has generated several articles in the Norwegian Psychologist Journal.. (1995 Mølstad, Havik, Barth) "A sound soul in a sound body—changes in muscular/ respiratory characteristics after short-term dynamic psychotherapy and work by Norwegian psychologist and physiotherapist Berit Bunkan[6]. In Norway there are many studies about the application of character analytic vegetotherapy, for example Asbjörn O. Faleide has made many studies about the application of characteranalytic vegetotherapy and pscyhosomatics[7] [8]. Rolf Grönseth[9] is another one who has done and written several studies on the application of character analytic vegetotherapy.

The large part of Character analytic vegetotherapy practice is with clients in an individual setting, in a private practice situation. There are some Character analytic vegetotherapy training centres which have Character analytic vegetotherapy clinics, where members of the public come in and are ascribed a therapist. Thereafter they will usually be seen by that person. There is also a Character analytic vegetotherapy practiced in a group setting and in a different training situations. Some of the institutions that practice Character analytic vegetotherapy in group therapy settings combine the work with group analytic theory developed by Bion[10] and Foulkes[11] in England.

2. Please provide evidence that your approach has demonstrated its claim to knowledge and competence within its field tradition of diagnosis/assessment and of treatment/intervention.

The three Character Analysis Vegetotherapy schools that are members of the EABP Forum (+other schools for ex. two Norvegian schools) are responsible for determining the competence of their trainees in diagnosis and treatment. The methods of assessing competence vary somewhat , but the common ground is that the trainees practice assessment and evaluation first on each other and with case studies presented by the teachers and receive intensive supervision with their first clients. They are also coming into line with the EABP Training Standards or are higher than them. In order to be admitted to EABP membership, applicants must have completed the following criteria:

1. At least 600 hours of professional training as a psychotherapist over at least a three year period, 400 of which must have taken place with a recognised school of body-psychotherapy "or the equivalent".

2. At least 150 hours of ongoing individual (or group) body-psychotherapy, one three-hour session of group work being equal to one hour of individual psychotherapy. These hours of personal psychotherapy should be outside the setting of training with a professionally paid bodypsychotherapist. At least 100 hours should be individual one-to-one sessions.

3. A minimum of at least 100 hours of professional supervision by a body-psychotherapist in either group or individual context outside of the setting of the training "or the equivalent". The number of hours of group supervision should be multiplied by two and divided by the number of people in the group.

4. At least 600 hours, preferably more, of paid professional practice as a body-psychotherapist over a 3-year period, either in group or individual context, "or the equivalent".

Although there may be therapy and supervision within the training contract, the hours which meet the four criteria must be contracted and paid for separately.

On each training different diagnostical tools are presented and taught based on the theory of Character Analysis Vegetotherapy. Assessment, evaluation and diagnosis is an ongoing process in psychotherapy. Making a diagnosis does not stop after the first interviews.

Ofcourse it is very important for the therapist to make a proper assessment of the client during these first interviews but we are underlining that the assessment process is actually part of the whole psychotherapy process. To make the right intervention every hour asks the therapist for to make the right assessment of the clients present state and phase every hour. Because the method of Character Analysis Vegetotherapy is an active method as opposed to some more passive methods like Freuds classical psychoanalysis, the issue of ongoing assessment of the present situation becomes more important. The assessment is made with four different modes of information gathering. First the therapist listens to the words of the client, the content, the story of it. Secondly he listens how the words are said, what is the information covered in persons specific way of expressing the words. What is the emotional attitude concealed in the way the words are spoken, the sound of the voice, the facial expression, the posture, the gestures, the movements, the color of the skin, the breathing and other autonomic nervous system functions. Thirdly the therapists are trained to use the vegetative identification. Vegetative identification means that a person is able to feel in his/her own body the same or similar feeling, emotion or sensation as the other person. With proper training the therapist can sometimes be able to feel for example the same contractions of muscles in her body as the client. As a fourth mode of gathering information, imitation can be used. Imitation as a mode of gathering information can be very useful especially in a supervision situation.

The assessment of the client is made according to the theory of Character Analytic Vegetotherapy, but the trainees are also trained to use the general psychiatric diagnosis method mainly based on DSM-IV. We think that it is important for the therapist to be able to communicate with other professionals in the field of psychotherapy and psychiatry who may not necessarily have knowledge of our approach.

A vast palette of interventions are taught in our trainings. Every action or non-action by the therapist is seen as intervention in the psychotherapeutic setting. In the psychotherapeutic setting there is no empty or dead time. This means that the silence of the therapist is also one type of intervention, which can be used with a purpose. Every situation and every client needs a specific, context-based, characterological intervention. This means that the therapy can not be done following a general scheme, but must be adjusted with every situation, every client and every therapist.

Character Analytic Vegetotherapy is dealing with different realms, which are to build a whole.

The realms are the following: emotional, cognitive, symbolic and somatic. So the therapist has be able to move in all these realms and make interventions in and from any of these realms.

Reich in the Function of the Orgasm : "The character armor now showed ifself to be functionally identical with muscular hypertension, the muscular armor. The concept of functional identity which I had to introduce, means nothing but the fact that muscular and character attitudes serve the same function in the psychic apparatus; they can influence and replace each other. Basically, they cannot be separated; in their function they are identical".

Concepts which are arrived at by the unification of facts immediately lead on to other things. If the character armor expressed ifself through the muscular armor and vice versa, then the unity of psychic and somatic functions was comprehended and became of being influenced in a practical way. From now on, I was able to make practical use of this unity. When a character inhibition would fail to respond to psychic influencing, I would work at the corresponding somatic attitude. Conversely, when a disturbing muscular attitude proved difficult of access, I would work on its characterological expression and thus loosen it up. A typical friendly smile, e.g., which impeded the work, could be eliminated by describing the expression as well as by disturbing the muscular attitude.

3. Please provide evidence that your approach has a clear and self-consistent theory of the human being, of the therapeutic relationship, and of health and illness.

Character Analytic Vegetotherapy sees the human being as a mind-body unit. This approach was adopted on the basis of Reich's studies on the factors that govern the relationship between health and illness from a holistic point of view.

The approach is interested in the natural functions of a living being. It also pays attention to a society's practice, which may either inhibit or favour these vital functions. Our approach is based on the view that the human being, as all living systems strive for an energetic equilibrium through anabolic metabolism - energy absorption - and catabolic metabolism - energy release. In other words, as human beings we take in food, air, make contact with others and discharge energy through movement, sexuality, maintenance of the automatic, vital functions, and also through abstract thinking . The biological function of the orgasm, as Reich demonstrated it, is to balance the energy excesses produced by the vital processes, the natural non-equilibrium state between consumption and absorption.

Therefore the orgasm is a basic regulative element of the system and the impoverishment of this self-regulatory capacity of the organism is seen to produce unstability in the function of the organism, which has pathological consequences both at psychical and somatic levels.

If the somatic excitement associated with the sexual desire does not get released, this will lead to anxiety as a response to the irritation of the neurovegetative function. The functional anthithesis between pleasure and anxiety together with neurovegetative mechanics help explain the concept of the orgasm as a regulatory mechanism. Consequently, the emotions of pleasure and anxiety can be understood as a biological phenomena.

Within this frame of reference the character analytic vegetotherapy studies the bodymind relationship starting from the view that the body and the mind function as two poles, where the disturbances of vital functions are manifested. Furthermore, our concept of the psychosomatic phenomena is based on the organism's energy function. Psychic as well as somatic processes mirror the same biological energy, but through different paths.

With respect to health and illness, we start from the fact that it is natural for the human animal to to be exposed to change. Furthermore, we hold that we are both physical and psychical beinsgs endowed with emotions, and it is exactly this complexity of material and immaterial elements that makes us human. All that concerns us, is simultaneousl physical and psychical.

The concept of psychosomaticity has been challenged, because it has been associated with the idea that it is the mind that causes the somatic illness, which is an error.

Disease is present in all our biosystem. Our biology is exposed to organic alterations as well to emotions. Depending on each person's history and character, a major or minor prevalescence of the psyche over the organic manifests or vice versa.

All our experiences and illnesses are psychosomatical by nature. Our biosystem strives to maintain equilibrium, and when this equilibrium is disturbed it will result in a disorder, which will have repercussions on all the levels of our being. This psychosomatic relationship is well illustrated in colloquial language and in literature, as for example, in the phrases "He makes me sick with his...", "She broke my heart", "You are giving me a headache".

The concept of psychosomaticity also applies to the emotions. The term emotion comes from latin ex-movere, which means, 'to move outwards'. In other words, it contains the notion of movement and the notion of externalisation. Consequently, an emotion can be seen as a basic means by which a human being strives to express herself out of her biological center. This process of externalisation, of coming out, requires movement of the biosystem, in order that the emotion will become visible. An emotion provokes a series of physical changes in our organism, and when these physical reactions reach our mind, the emotion becomes conscious, that is, we make a cognitive contact with the primarily biological element.

If the expression of emotions is inhibited throughout development, then something that tends to manifest itself by nature becomes non-functional. In our culture, it is common to repress and prohibit the free expression of feelings in children. In order to cope with/help the repression of the emotions, muscles contract and bring forth a state of physiological imbalance, which fosters the development of diseases. We cannot point out exactly which reaction or process produces a symptom or a disease, but we can diagnose the beginning of a duodenum ulcer. If a child needs to chronically contract their diaphragm to lessen the feeling of emotions, this will lead to organic pathologies. After this external repression, first in the family, then at school and later in the society, the act of repression, that at first was imposed, becomes "the right thing to do". In this way, a whole series of internal emotional filters are developed by means of which children, in order to survive, are compelled to adapt to society.

The predominance of psychic or somatic symptoms of a disorder vary from case to case. On the basis of different proportionalities one can establish various categories of illnesses ranging from the states where psychical symptoms make up the whole disease to the states where there are no psychic elements present. For the first case we could take hypochondria and for the latter, cancer.

Hypochondria, which does not include any organic alterations, can be seen as a psychosomatic state as the symptoms are felt in the body . The hypochondriac is afraid of contracting a severe illness, the psychic symptom predominates over the organic one that only shows as a hypersensitivity of certain parts of the body. It is a question of a distorted and augmented self-perception, which is a mental, not a bodily illness, even though the illness is projected on the body. A hypochondriac may suffer from real bodily hallucinations and think of some parts of his/her body as persecutors, . In that case, we would rather talk about a psychopathological disorder. Hypochondria is a manifestation of a severe distortion in a person's bodily image. None of us is perfectly symmetric, our right and left sides are not perfect replicas of each other, but hypochondriacs frequently tend to perceive these asymmetries as symptoms of severe organic diseases, generally associated with degenerative diseases, such as cancer. These persons may be more afraid of the pain associated with the disease than they are of death.

Next to hypochondria in the distribution of psychic and organic alterations can be placed the phenomenon of hysterical somaticizing . It is a question of organic manifestations that use symbolization to express themselves. In the hysteric a conflict that cannot be recognised psychically by the patient is directly expressed at the somatic level. The symptom has a bodily manifestation, but its origin is in the mind, and it is there where the solution must be found. In these cases one should discretely perform a clinical examination in order to determine possible organic causes and then begin psychotherapy. The unconscious conflict that underlines the case of hysteria can become manifest as voluntary muscular or sensory disturbances, such as paralysis, hysteric blindness or deafness. The conflict is not verbalised, it does not get to the level of consciousness, but becomes somaticised: the body speaks. Somaticisation is a metaphor for the conflict that the person is undergoing and the body is used as a tool of expression.

The next level in the psychosomatic continuum could be represented by "functional diseases" or psychosomatic reactions, where the degree of somaticisation is clear, but where the degree of psychic influence is more difficult to discern. The emotional counterpart is alwa.ys present generating anxiety and interfering with the neurovegetative system, thus disturbing the smooth involuntary musculature. This causes, for example, problems in the digestive system, such as gastritis, constipation, diarrhea, flatulence etc. This group of psychosomatic disorders also includes tendencies to have allergetic reactions.

At the very end of the continuum we find the disorders which are defined by psychological literature as major psychosomatic illnesses: hypertension, asthma, irritable colon, ulcerous colitis, etc. The organic changes are large and medical intervention is necessary. The Reichian paradigm includes among psychosomatic illnesses also such degenerative illnesses as cancer and cardiovascular diseases. These are seen as manifestations of the biopathy of the whole vital living system of a person. In other words, the whole psychosomatic organism is involved, even though the illness manifests itself in a certain part of the body as, for example, in the cases of a colon tumor or an infarct.

The psychosomatic illnesses have been studied widely in the recent decades. The general understanding seems to connect these disorders with the incapacity of a person to recognise and express their feelings. The American researcher Sifneos talks about aleksitymia, describing it as a state where the connection to the emotions is inhibited. The Paris Psychosomatic School and Marty[12] talk about essential repression and operator thinking. Reich talked about the kind of biopathy where the autonomous possibilities for emotional management are missing. People suffering from this state tend to find difficulty in having contact with their emotions, as if they did not know how to interprete their feelings.

They are persons that look normal, and well adapted, but with a connection to the inner world which is manifested through the body, not as language.

Psychosomatic phenomena will always occur, they are part of our identity. Primary prevention of illness : one of the roots is the emotional compromise. Therefore, in order to prevent illnesses, it is of vital importance to enable people to stay in contact with their feelings and to express them. This concerns especially infancy and childhood as they are the most vulnerable periods of emotional growth. Secondary prevention: We emphasise the importance of education and information to make people conscious of these things, especially in the fields of education and health care. The role of the mass media in shaping the opinions of people is also of importance. Tertiary prevention is intervention.

We share the view of Ola Raknes in his book Wilhelm Reich and Orgonomy,[13] that health is a mediated and partial concept in today's society. Therefore, we estimate the question of health from a realistic point of view and wish to present a list of some characteristics that we think are common to healthy organisms:

1. Capacity for complete concentration, be it on a piece of work, a task, a conversation, or in a genital embrace, and a feeling of unity both in that which one is and in that which one does.

2. Capacity for and feeling of contact, both with oneself and with other people, with nature and art and, for instance, with the tools one uses in one's work; an ability to receive impressions, of having the courage and the will to allow things and events to make impressions.

3. Freedom from anxiety where there is no danger, and ability to react rationally even in dangerous situations - and courage to enter voluntarily into dangerous situations where one sees a rational important purpose in doing so.

4. A deep and enduring feeling of well-being and strength, a feeling of which one can become aware each time one directs attention to it, even when struggling with diffuculties or when feeling bodily pain; some of these feeling can be traced to the feelings of pleasure in the genitals during expiration.

According to Ola Raknes the criteria for an individual's health at the somatic level should be organism's free pulsation. When we talk about the pulsation of the biosystem, we refer to the capacity of any organism having its own blood circulation and protoplasmatic mobility for constant pulsation, that is, for contraction and expansion. Consequently, the capacity for free pulsation should be considered as a criterion for health. The following characteristics indicate the state of free pulasation:

A. A momentarily, complete loss of consciousness during the orgasm, consciousness in the sense of mental activity does not exist during the orgasm. This happens at regular intervals, not in every intercourse, since there is not enough energy excess to reach orgasm every time. However, more or less pleasant states of discharge will be reached. Healthy individuals will experience orgasm from time to time depending also on the circumstances.

B. The organism is balanced: the body is elastically erect, without spasms or contractions. This does not mean that there should not be any tensions. A normal muscle looks and feels balanced and it has a firmness that does not exist when the muscle is blocked.

C. The skin is warm and well circulated with blood. The colour of the skin is reddish and slightly tanned. Sweat may be warm and its odour is not unpleasant. In clinical practice one can easily notice how a patient's skin may change its colour and the odour of sweat. In fact, there are persons, who have a strong and smelly sweat, even if they use deodorant, which after some time becomes liquid sweat with a good smell.

D. The muscles can change from tension to relaxation without the need to be chronically contracted or flaccid. Chronically contracted muscles can be signs of the neurotic character structure's muscular armour, and chronically flaccid muscles may tell about a psychotic character structure. Peristalsis is normal; there is neither constipation nor hemorrhoids.

E. Physiognomy and facial expressions are lively and mobile, never acting as a mask. Eyes are clear with rapid pupil reactions to the changes in the intensity of the light. There is a very simple exercise, at the vegetative level of action, that can be done: change the light intensity of a flashlight and observe the reaction of the pupil, that is, whether it contracts or dilates. There is also another diagnostic tool: reflection of the cardio-ocular. It is performed by pressing the eyeballs for four seconds and taking the pulse at the same time. First there will be a vagotonic reaction when the pulse rate decreases. Then, the time required for the recovery of the normal pulse is measured. If the recovery is slow (if it takes double the time, considering that four seconds is the normal recovery time), there is vagotonia, but if it is shorter or the pulse has accelerated from the initial rate, then there is sympatheticonia. In a healthy person the eyballs are neither sunken nor extremely protruding, which reflects the normal functioning of the internal muscles of the eyes.

F. Breathing is complete with pauses before inspiring. In other words, after inspiration and expiration there is a time interval when oxygen is not needed. The thoraic movement is free and easy.

G. Pulse is usually regular, calm and strong. Blood pressure should be normal; taking into account, however, that each person has a different measure. What is important is not to have great changes in one's blood pressure, which would indicate some degree of non-equilibrium.

H. Red blood cells are full. This factor has to do with the orgonomic blood analysis, Tanalysis, whic differ from ordinary diagnosic analysis. T-analysis focuses on different problems, in which blood is analyzed with specific laboratory equipment. Reich founded a research center in which a person's biosystem energy level could be measured through the observation of red blood cells. Reich discovered that when the red blood cells are healthy they are full with tense peripheral membranes with no sharp ends or spikes. The weakness of the red blood cells indicates that there is a low response capacity in the organism.

Depending on the severity of the imbalace of the function of the nervous-vegetative system and the pulsation of the organism, the following consequences may be manifested:

Wheter A or B prevail, depends on the environment and the person's history, and in which developmental phase severe disturbations have taken place. Any severe disturbance in a person's life will always lead into an artificial homeostasis of the organism, and that is the origin of what Reich called "character-muscular armour". In fact, it is an intense fight for life.

Depending on the emotion that is repressed, the historical situation in which the repression occurred, a defence mechanism may develop or the organism will widen its defence mechanism by moulding it into a character-muscular armour. The function of the armour is, on the one hand, to absorb the energy excess and to help a person avoid feeling anxiety ; and, on the other hand, to prevent the biosystem's expansion by way of muscle contraction. The formation of the armour, due to the lack of energy and muscular hypertension at the superficial level, will eventually develop into anorgonia of the biosystem, which then sustains a state of constant stress. Permanent stress, together with the ensuing incipient changes at hormonal and physiological levels, and the reactive sympatheticonia provoke a cycle. This cycle is composed of the lack of cellular oxygen, carbon dioxide excess and the tendency to cellular degeneration and is maintained by what Reich called "orgastic impotence". The person maintains the energetic excitement being unable to abandon themself during the orgasm in order to discharge the energy excess.

We are also aware of the social and cultural constraints that shape our lives by limiting an individual's capability for pleasure, expansion, creativity, growth, etc. Therefore, preventive work is important. As followers of Reich we support orgonomic prophylaxis with the objective to prevent the formation of the character-muscular armour during the childhood by paying attention to the conditions that effect the development of a human being right from gestation.

4. Please provide evidence that your approach has methods specific to the approach which generate developments in the theory of psychotherapy, demonstrate new aspects in the understanding of human nature, and lead to ways of treatment/intervention.

Character Analytic Vegetotherapy has a long tradition of creativity and innovation. While many theories have historically looked at the human psyche as a co-ordination of bodily, mental, and relational factors, this assumption has rarely been consistently applied and detailed as it is in the Character Analytic Vegetotherapy. Academic approaches to communication distinguish verbal- and nonverbal- communication. We consider that an organism communicates with other organisms through millions of exchanged items. Verbal exchange is just one aspect of the flow of communicated information.

As mentioned earlier Wilhelm Reich is the original creator of Character Analytic Vegetotherapy. Because Wilhelm Reich and character analysis and vegetotherapy have had such a strong influence on psychotherapy and specially in body-oriented psychotherapy in developing its theory, understanding human nature and new ways of treatment and intervention, that it would take a whole book to answer this question correctly, we are only giving a short summary and presenting some of the developments. To the reader who is interested to find a more profound answer we refer to the original writings of Reich and more specifically "Character Analysis" and "the Function of the Orgasm" and several journal among others the Journal of Orgonomy, Orgonomic Functionalism, Energy and Character, Orgone Energy Bulletin and Core.

Freud was pessimistic about therapy by the early 1920's. Other persons were seeking solutions for improving therapy. Wilhelm Reich, Otto Rank and Sandor Ferenczi were the leaders in the search for new techniques. They all thought that analysis had beocome too much of an intellectual process, that too much emphasis was placed on recalling the past, and that this often meant that analysis was not a living emotional experience. Reichs important contribution was presenting the method of character analysis. A new aim emerged for therapy. The old goal had been the recovery of the infantile amnesia. It had been thought that the bringing of past experiences into conciousness produced cure.The new approach which was put forward by Ferenczi, Reich and Rank, was based on the assumption that the patient did not suffer so much from his past as from the way in which his past was influencing his present behavior. The emphasis was moved from the past to the present. This was a tremendous step. It is interesting how the creator of Gestalt therapy Frederick Perls popularized this and coined the term "here-and-now" in sixties. When Reich (and also Rank and Ferenczi) moved the empasis from the past to the present this also is drawing more attention to the relationship between the therapist and the client. Out of observing how the client was behaving in the analysis (therapy) and outside the analytic situation came Reich's theory of character defenses, that is character armor, an interest in studying more fully the activities of the ego, and the theory of interpersonal relations. Anna Freud continued this line of work in her classical work "The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence[14]", which came out in 1936, which affected strongly to the whole school of ego-psychology, Margaret Mahler, Rene Spitz, John Bowlby etc. In the late 1920's Reich was already teaching new methods for dealing with the complicated defences of the ego and most of the discoveries of recent years relate to the unconscious processes of the ego. The term character is used for habitual attitudes developed as reactions to the conflict between outer demands and life situation and inner impulses (or drives). Freud presented the theory of character structure in 1908 in a paper called Character and Anal Eroticism[15]. After about twenty years Reich was able to present a successful therapeutic approach to the problem. This basic methodology is still used worldwide in many countries and training communities. After Freuds first theory of character structure this line was further developed mainly by Karl Abraham[16], but also by others like Ferenczi and Reich. Reichs theory of character was further developed among others by Ellsworth Baker[17], John Pierrakos[18], Alexander Lowen[19] and Feredico Navarro[20] just to mention a few.

In year 1925 Wilhelm Reich published his first book Der Triebhafte Karakter[21] (The impulsive character) . In this book Reich distinguished diagnostically impulsive character both from symptom neurosis and psychosis. He saw that impulsive character was in a transferring state from neurosis to psychosis. According to Reich the person with impulsive character "rationalized" his sickness in a way not similar to a neurotic. He could f.ex. blaim other people for his tamtrums and did not see himself emotionally disturbed. The description of the impulsive character is similar what today is called "borderline".

When Wilhelm Reich in 1927 formulated the idea of character as a resistance per se in the therapeutic setting, led this also to a new formulation of transference phenonoma. Resistance was already observed by Breuer and Freud and discussed in "studien uber hysteri[22]".

Transference was also a concept of Freud, but it was originally only referring to the oidipal situation, which was seen to be transferred in to the analytical (therapeutic) setting. Oidipus situation was ofcourse also one of Freuds original concepts.

Reich demonstrated that character can be seen as repetitive life patterns. This is leading to the next conclusion, which is that one no longer can see of transference only as a term applying to libidinous situations of the oidipus period. Long standing ways of reacting, habitual patterns of behavior, most of them from periods of life earlier than the oidipus situation, were seen to have the same irrational quality as the original transference phenomena.

In the process of therapy making the client aware of his/her character, that is to say her reaction patterns taken from the past and applied indiscriminately to the present situation in the present tense therapeutic situation, can alleviate her to see their role in her difficulties. This can have a strong positive therapeutic effect.

With these modifications of the psychoanalytic theory Reich could make psychotherapy less independent from causal theories of the possible causes of sickness, neurosis etc. We do not have to know what situation in persons history led to certain kind of behovior or reaction or learning in order to work therapeutically with the problem. The client shows all his customary ways of reacting to people with the therapist in all levels; emotional, cognitive, symbolic and somatic. The conscious remembering of childhood traumas is hence no longer necessary. And as we know more and more today, the memory is very tricky business, as advocated for example by the American False Memory Movement.

The expansion of transference phenomena made by Reich has been a crucial development in psychotherapy and is today used by the majority of psychotherapists worldwide. Reich himself but also other psychotherapists among others Harry Stack Sullivan and Frieda Fromm-Reichmann[23] have demonstrated that these same phenomena happen also with psychotics and not only with neurotics and narsissistic personality orders. The behavior of a psychotic is almost completely transference in the sense of being taken from other frames of reference and having little relation to the therapist in reality, present tense. The indifference or distrust frequently shown towards the psychotherapist by psychotics is just as truly a repetition of earlier patterns as the classical hysteric's so called love or competitiveness.

Another change in the theory of transference as a result of the formulation of the repetition compulsion is also significant. Before character analysis in 1927 it was assumed that transference occurred according to the so called pleasure principle. One relived an experience in therapy instead of remenbering it because one wished to experience again the forbidden satisfaction. This assumption is no longer necessary when transference is seen as an automatic tendency to re-live life patterns, both pleasurable and unpleasurable.

Reich took a bold and big step when he showed that character is the main resistance in therapy. Or that the main resistant way of behavior, for example aggressiviness in therapy is the gate to the character and therefore to healing of neurotic and psychotic suffering.

Reich in Character Analysis: "If a patient having such a character enters analytic treatment because of some symptom or other, this protective wall continues to serve in the analysis as a character resistance; and it soon become apparent that nothing can be accomplish until the character armor, which conceals and consumes the infantile anxiety, has been destroyed..." In very brief, Reich found that people with oral characters tended to develop a parasitic clinging to the therapist; people with anal characters were usually stubborn and obstructing.

When pointing out empathically with no criticism these most apparent and obvious ways of reacting to the client in all situations in which they occur, the therapist is breaking a strong tabu, which is, that in everyday relations people tend not to say to each other what they see or hear in each other. With this active method the client has the opportunity to became aware of her behavior, thinking and emotions and help her to understand how all this is preventing her from full life and how it is leading to a variety of symptoms.

Originally transference phenomena was seen only as positive transference. Reich and some others discoved that there is also negative transference and that it is the hidden negative transference, which so many times was preventing the therapy to give positive outcomes.

Reich has been writing extensively about the negative transference. The exposing of the negative transference have ever since Reich been widely studied and written in the Character Analytic Vegetotherapy movement.

Slowly around 1920¨s one started to realize too that there is a counterpart to transference, that is counter-transference. Althougth Freud's original idea was that the therapist should be neutral, tabula rasa, he soon realized that it was sometimes not possible for the therapist to remain entirely out of the picture, that sometimes he would react personally to the patient and what he said or did. This Freud named as countertransference, by which he meant that the therapist sometimes transfers elements from their past or present problems to the therapeutic situation. It is nevertheless surprising how little this subject was discussed before around 1930.

As mentioned earlier Reichs (among others) interest had moved more to the interpersonal level, the therapeutic setting, in his search out from the dead end where psychoanalysis as a treatment method had come around 1920's. Working with the negative transference and counter-transference has proved to be important factors in many cases for better outcomes in psychotherapy.

Reich in character analysis: "... Without going into the whole complex of question, we will illustrate the problem of countertransference with a few typical examples. It is usually possible to recognize by the way the case is proceeding whether and in which area the attitude of the analyst is defective, i.e., disturbed by his own psychological problems. The fact that some cases never produce an affective negative transference is to be ascribed not so much to the patient's block as that of the analyst. The analyst who has not resolved the repression of his own aggressive tendencies will be incabable of accomplishing this work satisfactorily in his patients and might even develop an affective unwillinness to form an accurete intellectual appraisal of the importance on the analysis of the negative transference. His repressed aggression will cause the analyst to regard as a provocation the patient's aggression which has to be roused. He will either overlook negative impulses in the patient or obstruct their manifestation in some way. He might even reinforce the repression of the aggression by exaggerated friendliness toward the patient. Patients quickly sense such attitudes on the part of the analyst and thoroughly exploit them in warding off drives. An affect block or an excessively solicitous bearing on the part of the analyst is the most telling sign that he is warding off his own aggression.

The counterpart to this is the analyst's characterological inability to cope with the patient's sexual manifestation, i.e., his or her positive tranference, without becoming emotionally involved. In acting as a control analyst, one observes that the analyst's own fear of the pateint's sensual and sexual manifestation often severely hinders the treatment and can easily forestall the establishment of genital primacy in the patient. Under normal analytic conditions, the patient's genital demands for love become manifest in the transference. If the analyst himself is somewhat befuddled with respect to sexual matters or does not have at least a sexual affirmative intellectual orientation, his work as an analyst will certainly suffer.

Needless to say, it is extreamly likely that an analyst lacking sexual experience will be unalble to comprehend the actual difficulties in the patient's sexual life. Hence, the student of psychoanalysis should fulfill, while undergoing analysis during his training period, at least the same requirements which apply to the patient: the establishment of genital primacy and the attainment of a satisfactory sexual life.

Unless he represses his own impulses, the sexually disturbed or unsatisfed analyst will not only be hard-pressed to control his postitive counter-transferense; he will find it increasinly difficult to cope with the provocation to his own sexual demands by the patient's sexual manifestation. He will undoubtedly become entangled in a neurotic predicament. Practice imposes the strictest demands upon us in this respect, and we would be foolish to conceal or gainsay them. Whether the analyst consciously admits or denies that he has to struggle with such diffuculties makes little difference, for the average patient will sense the analyst's unsoncious sexual negation and rejection and will consequently be unable to get rid of his own sexual inhibitions. There is, in fact, more to it than that. The analyst, to be sure, has the right to live according to his own light. But the fact remains that if, unconsciously, he adheres to rigid moral principles, which the patient always senses, if, without knowing it, he has repressed polygamous tendencies or certain kinds of love play, he will be able to deal with very few patients and will be inclined to hold up some natural mode of behavior as "infantile".

Analysts who experience the transference of their patients in an essentially narcissistic way tend to interpret those contemporary manifestations of love as signs of a personal love relationship. For the same reason, if often happens that the patient's criticism and distrust are not adequately worked through.

Analysts who are not sufficently in control of their own sadism easily lapse into the well-known "analytic silence", despite the fact that there are no satifactory reasons for it. They regard the patient himself, rather than the patient's neurosis, as an enemy who "does not want to get well". Threats to break off the analysis are unnecessery in analytic technique as they are of a lack of patience. The latter causes technique to fall short of its possibilities...

Reich also revolutioned the idea of masocism in his theory of masocistic character. In his article of masocistic character originally published in "Internationalen Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse[24]", XVIII (1932-33) Reich refuted Freuds theory of dead instict.

Since analytic characterology presupposes certain ideas about instincts, we have selected the masochistic instincts to illustrate a special type of neurotic character.

Pre-psychoanalytic sexology was essentially of the opinion that the tendency to find gratification in the endurance of pain or moral degradation constituted masochism, which was considered a special instinctual aim. Since there is an absence of pleasure in both goals, there has been from the very beginning a question about the nature of masochism: how can something which is unpleasurable be instinctively desired and even provide gratification? To resort to technical terminology is merely to postpone the solution; the term "algolagnia" was supposed to explain that one wants to obtain pleasure from being beaten or degraded.

Some authors divined correct relationships when they contested the notion that the masochist really wants to be beaten; they contended that the beating itself played merely an intermediary role in the experience of pleasurable self-degradation (Krafft-Ebbing). However that may be, the essential formulation remained: what the average person senses as unpleasurable is perceived by the masochist as pleasurable or at least serves as a source of pleasure.

The psychoanalytic investigation of the latent content and dynamics of masochism, in both its moralistic and its erogenic components, produced a wealth of new insights. Freud discovered that masochism and sadism are not absolute opposites, that the one instinctual aim is never present without the other. Masochism and sadism appear as an antithetical pair; the one can change suddenly into the other. Thus, it is a matter of a dialectical antithesis, which is determined by the reversal of an active attitude to a passive attitude, while the ideational content remains the same. Freud's theory of libidinal development further distinguishes the three stages of childhood sexuality (oral, anal, and genital) and, in the beginning, relegated sadism to the anal phase.

Later it was found that every stage of sexual development is characterized by a corresponding form of sadistic aggression. Following up this problem, I was able to find in each of these three forms of sadistic aggression a reaction of the psychic apparatus to the specific frustration of the corresponding partial libidinal impulse. According to this concept, the sadism of each stage results from the mixture between the sexual demand itself and the destructive impulse against the person responsible for its frustration; oral sadism (frustration of sucking~destructive impulse, biting); anal sadism (frustration of anal pleasure~crushing, stomping, beating); phallic sadism (frustration of genital pleasure~piercing, puncturing). This concept was in complete agreement with Freud's original formulation that destructive feelings (whose most frequent cause is the frustration of an instinct) are initially directed against the outer world and turn against the self only later, i.e., when they too are inhibited by frustration and fear, and end in self-destruction. Sadism becomes masochism when it is turned against the person himself; the superego (the representative of the person responsible for frustration or, to put it another way, the representative of the demands of society in the ego) becomes the agent of punishment toward the ego (conscience). The guilt feeling results from the conflict between the love striving and the destructive impulse.

The concept that masochism is a secondary formation was later given up by Freud himself in favor of another, namely that sadism was masochism directed toward the outer world. In this new formulation, there was supposed to be a primary biological tendency toward self-destruction, a primary or erogenic masochism. Freud's statement was founded on the more basic assumption of a "death instinct," postulated as the antithesis of eros. Thus, primary masochism was said to be the independent manifestation of the biologically rooted death instinct, based on the processes of dissimilation in every cell of the organism (also "erogenic masochism").

The exponents of the theory of the death instinct made every effort to support their assumptions by calling attention to the physiological processes of decomposition. Yet a convincing substantiation was nowhere to be found. A recent article which takes a stand for the reality of the death instinct deserves special attention because it approaches the problem clinically and offers physiological arguments which, at first glance, give one pause for thought.

Therese Benedek bases her arguments on the research of Ehrenberg. This biologist discovered that even in the unstructured protozoon a self-contradictory process can be found.

Certain processes in the protoplasm not only determine the assimilation of food but at the same time lead to a precipitation of substances previously existing in solution. The first structural formation of the cell is irreversible inasmuch as dissolved substances are converted into a solid, undissolved condition. What assimilates is part of the life process; what comes into existence through assimilation is a change in the cell, a higher structurization which, from a certain point on, namely when it predominates, is no longer life, but death. This makes sense, especially when we think of the calcification of the tissues in old age. But this very argument refutes the assumption of a tendency toward death. What has become fixed and immobile, i.e., what remains behind as the slag of the life process, hinders life and its cardinal function, the alternation of tension and relaxation, the basic rhythm of metabolism in the fulfillment of the need for food and sexual gratification. This disturbance of the life process is the exact antithesis, of what we have come to know as the basic characteristic of the instinct. The process of rigidification increasingly disrupts the rhythm of tension and relaxation. To accept these processes as the basis of an instinct, we would have to change our concept of instincts.

If, furthermore, anxiety were the expression of the "liberated death instinct," it would still have to be explained how "fixed structures" can become free. Benedek herself says that we regard the structure, i.e., what is firmly frozen, as something inimical to life only when it predominates and inhibits the life processes.

If the structure-forming processes are synonymous with the death instinct ; if, moreover, as Benedek states, anxie ty corresponds to the inner perception of this preponderant rigidification, i.e., dying, then we shall have to assume further that anxiety is absent in the years of childhood and adolescence and appears increasingly with age. The exact opposite is the case. It is precisely in periods of sexual efflorescence that the function of anxiety is most strongly in evidence, i.e., because of the condition of inhibition. According to this assumption, we would also have to find the fear of death in gratified human beings, for they too are subject to the same biological process of decomposition as those who are ungratified.

By consistently pursuing Freud' s theory of actual anxiety, I was able to change the original formula—anxiety arises through the conversion of libido—to read: anxiety is a phenomenon of the same process of excitation in the vaso-vegetative system, that in the sensory system is perceived as sexual pleasure.

Clinical observation teaches us that, initially, anxiety is nothing other than the sensation of constriction, a condition of stasis (anxiety = angustiae); fears (imagined dangers) become emotionally charged anxieties only when that specific stasis occurs. Should it eventually turn out that the socially imposed restrictions upon sexual gratifcation accelerate the sexual stasis that accompanies the structure-forming processes, thus also accelerating the process of dying, this would not be proof of the derivation of anxiety from these processes but only of the lifedamaging effect of sex-negating morality.

This new formulation of the concept of masochism results automatically in a change in the etiological formula of neurosis. The essential meaning of Freud's original conviction was that psychic development is carried out on the basis of the conflict between instinct and outer world. A second concept followed which did not, it is true, annul the first but very much reduced its importance. Now the psychic conflict was conceived of as the result of the conflict between eros (sexuality, libido) and the death instinct (urge to self-annihilation, primary masochism).

The clinical basis for this hypothesis, which from the outset aroused the deepest doubts, was the peculiar, indeed puzzling fact that certain patients appear not to want to give up their suffering but seek out unpleasurable situations again and again. This was at variance with the pleasure principle. Thus, one had to assume that there was an inner, concealed intention to maintain the suffering or to reexperience it. It remained questionable how this "will to suffer" was to be conceived of, as a primary biological tendency or as a secondary formation of the psychic organism. It was possible to ascertain a need for punishment which according to the hypothesis of the death instinct—appeared to gratify through self-inflicted suffering the demands of an unconscious feeling of guilt. And subsequent to the publication of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, psychoanalytic literature, as expounded particularly by Alexander, Reik, and Nunberg, modified, without really being aware of it, the formula of the neurotic conflict. Originally, the neurosis was said to result from the conflict between instinct and outer world (libido—fear of punishment). Now it is said that the neurosis results from the conflict between instinct and the need for punishment (libido desire for punishment), i.e., the exact opposite of what had been said previously. This concept was in complete harmony with the new theory of instincts based on the antithesis between eros and the death instinct. This new theory traced the psychic conflict back to inner elements and more and more eclipsed the supreme role of the frustrating and punishing outer world. In the original theory, suffering was said to derive "from the outer world, from society." Now it was said to derive "from the biological will to suffer, from the death instinct and the need for punishment." This new formulation blocked the difficult path into the sociology of human suffering, into which the original psychological formula on the psychic conflict had made considerable headway. The theory of the death instinct, i.e., the theory of self-destructive biological instincts, leads to a cultural philosophy of human suffering (cf. Civilization and Its Discontents). Human suffering is said to be ineradicable because destructive impulses and impulses striving toward self-annihilation cannot be mastered. The original formulation of the psychic conflict, on the other hand, leads to a critique of the social system.

In the shifting of the source of suffering from the outer world, from society, to the inner world, and in its reduction to a biological tendency, one of analytic psychology's original and cardinal principles, the "pleasure-unpleasure principle," was severely undermined. The pleasure-unpleasure principle is a basic law of the psychic apparatus, according to which pleasure is sought and unpleasure is avoided. In the previous concept, pleasure and unpleasure or, otherwise expressed, the psychic reaction to pleasurable and unpleasurable stimuli determined psychic development and psychic reactions. The "reality principle" was not antithetical to the pleasure principle; it merely implied that, in the course of development and because of the influence of the outer world, the psychic apparatus has to get used to postponing momentary gains of pleasure and to forgoing some entirely. These "two principles of psychic functioning" could be valid only so long as masochism was regarded as the desire to endure suffering arising from an inhibition of the tendency to inflict pain or suffering upon another person was regarded, that is, as inverted sadism. So conceived, masochism lay wholly within the framework of the pleasure principle, though the problem remained as to how suffering can be pleasurable. From the very beginning, this was at variance with the nature and meaning of the pleasure function. While it was possible to understand how ungratified or inhibited pleasure could be transformed into unpleasure, it was hard to understand how unpleasure could become pleasure. In short, even the original concept of the generally accepted pleasure principle did not solve the basic enigma of masochism, for to say that masochism consisted in the pleasure derived from unpleasure did not explain anything.

The postulation of a "repetition compulsion" was accepted by most analysts as a satisfactory solution to the problem of suffering. It fit in extremely well with the hypothesis of the death instinct and the theory of the need for punishment, but it was very dubious in two respects. First, it invalidated the generally sound pleasure principle, so heuristically and clinically valuable. Second, it introduced into the empirically well-founded theory of the pleasure-unpleasure principle an indisputably metaphysical element, an unproven and "unprovable" hypothesis that caused a great deal of unnecessary confusion in the development of analytic theory. There was said to be a biological compulsion to repeat unpleasurable situations. The "principle of the repetition compulsion" was of no great import if conceived of as a basic biological principle, for as such it was merely a term. The formulation of the pleasure-unpleasure principle, on the other hand, could be substantiated by the physiological laws of tension and relaxation. Insofar as the repetition compulsion was understood to mean the law that every instinct strives to establish the state of repose and, moreover, to reexperience pleasures once enjoyed, there was nothing to object to. Thus understood, this formulation was a valuable supplement to our understanding of the mechanism of tension and relaxation. When conceived of in this way, the repetition compulsion lies wholly within the framework of the pleasure principle; indeed, the pleasure principle itself explains the compulsion to repeat. In 1923, rather awkwardly I defined instinct as the nature of pleasure to have to be repeated. Thus, within the framework of the pleasure principle, the repetition compulsion is an important theoretical assumption. However, it was precisely beyond the pleasure principle that the principle of the repetition compulsion gained its most significant formulation, as a hypothesis for the explanation of facts for which the pleasure principle was allegedly insufficient. It was not possible to prove clinically that the repetition compulsion was a primary tendency of the psychic apparatus. It was supposed to clarify so much, and yet it itself could not be substantiated. It seduced many analysts into assuming that there was a super-individual "ananke." This was superfluous as an explanation of the striving to reestablish the state of repose, for this striving is fully explained on the basis of the function of the libido to bring about a relaxation. This relaxation, in every instinctual sphere, is nothing other than the establishment of the original state of repose and is implicit in the concept of the instinct.

Many of the above mentioned concepts and formulations have become a central part of several other psychotherapeutic methods. In summary Character Analytic Vegetotherapy includes at least following new developments in the theory of psychotherapy.

-intellectual understanding is not enough, memory without affect produces no change or improvement for the patient.

-time concept; how the past is affecting the present, emphasis in the here-and-now

-relationship: the contact or no-contact between the patient and therapist is a special type of a relationship and everything that takes place during the treatment happens through the relationship.

-character. Reformulation of the concept character. Character is the main defence against healing process. These concepts where instumental for the ego-psychology movement and the exploration of the defences of the ego. Mainly we are talking here of the unconscious prosesses of the ego. Systematization of different character typers, research on different characters and interpersonal relations.

-transference, not only oidipal situation, which is transferred on to the psychotherapeutic setting but also the pre-oidipal. Also psychotics have transference. There are positive and negative transference and countertransference.

-independence from causality; it is not necessary to know what was leading the patient into sickness or disturbances in order to heal her.

-pleasure principle-repetition; one is repeating both pleasurable and unpleasurable events.

More specific concepts in Character Analytic Vegetotherapy that lead to new and innovative methods are still the following: Character has its equivalence in the physical realm, that is the body. This we call the muscular armor , which is the sum total of the muscular attitudes, which in turn is inhibiting the free pulsation of the body, its cells, breathing and emotions, organ sensations, in particular anxiety, rage, and sexual excitation. Muscular armor consists not only the muscels but also the connective tissue, inner organs, the nervous system, the whole bodily system. The behavioral repetition is shown also through the autonomous nervous system.

Orgasm reflex is crucial for the functioning of the autonomous nervous system in alternating the tho sides of autonomous nervsystem; tha parasympatic and sympatic. Orgasm formula is divided in four modes: tension, charge, discharge, relaxitation. These concepts lead to new methods which are: exploration of the the awareness of the physical sensations, (the self), feeling the body, expressive movement and sound (without words). The expressive language of the living is going beyond the verbal spoken language.

5. Please provide evidence that your approach includes processes of verbal exchange, alongside an awareness of non-verbal sources of information and communication.

The first of Reich's contributions to psychoanalytic therapy was the elaboration of a well-defined resistance analysis technique. Reich demonstrated the importance of analyzing the patient's resistance before interpreting unconcious material in dreams, failures and free association. Reich made his first great discovery while working on the resistance analysis. He noticed that the main resistance to the analysis did not reside in the patient's speech, but in the way he recounted his story, which revealed his character.

"Words do lie, but the way we recount them never does. It is the immediate expression, character unconscious." Reich was the first psychoanalyst to formulate a coherent theory of character. He demonstrated that the diverse aspects of a character were interrelated and together formed a coherent defence against the emotions that were, one way or another, perceived dangerous. He called this defence 'character armour' and demonstrated that this armour had its origin in childhood situations, in which the child repressed the satisfaction of an instinctive impulse.

When Reich shifted the emphasis from the interpretation of the material produded by the patients to the way they recounted their stories, many patiets became conscious of their characteristics and spontaneously changed their physical posture and behaviour. They were also able to express emotions which had remained unexpressed since childhood. Reich started to study physical postures which accopanied the expression of emotions and soon understood the existence of a double-sided armour: psychic and muscular. There is enough evidence that the muscular armour, which is composed of spasms, contractions, hypotension and tensions, is nothing but a physical expression of repressed emotions and thoughts and thus constitutes the somatic anchoring of neurosis. Reich showed that the repressed emotions and thoughts were anchored into the muscular armour, in other words, they were anchored to spasms and self-control, which was an unconscious mechanism. "While intellective memory remains linked to the neurons, emotive memory is to be found in the muscles, and, therefore, the musculature mirrors the person's emotional face."

This discovery brought forth another innovation in the psychotherapeutic technique which provided an access to neurosis from the somatic point of view. The patient is asked to pay attention to chronic tensions or he is made to feel chronic tension through direct contact. In this way, by releasing the tensions, emotions and repressed memories can be brought to the consciousness. We focus on muscular tension; however, it may happen that when we are able to release the muscular tension, the emotion associated with that tension is not always expressed but it hides under the shadow of a new tension or reactivates some precedent, lost tension. To achieve an ordered and efficient progress in therapy Reich defined a new therapeutic technique Character Analytic Vegetotherapy which development distanced it from psychoanalysis.

1. Making the patient conscious of his/her behaviour: habits, voice, facial and bodily expressions in order to spontaneously perceive what happens in his/her body.

2. Allowing the patient to express his/her thoughts and emotions through words and actions, as far as this would not cause him/her any harm.

3. Making the patient breath; in this way the therapist can observe and the patient feel where free pulsation is blocked, and find the appropriate method to release the tension that is blocking it.

Since Reich we have continued to use language as the way to access character analysis and direct work on the body as the way to mobilize and unblock the muscular armour. Both the tools, structurally integrated, allow the analysis of the character-muscular armour. In the therapeutic context, language has the basic function of integrating experiences brought forth in bodywork as well as the emotions associated with these experiences. Language is not only used as an analytic instrument, but also as a way to perform character analysis.

Reichian psychotherapy in general, and character-analytic vegetotherapy in particular, work on the character by applying the "character analytic" technique, and on the body by bodywork, which has acquired a systematic structure by the contributions of later authors, for example, O.Rakness and F.Navarro.

Bodywork is used to enhance the autovibratory specific movements of muscular bundles, which causes a stress situation in them leading to an emotional expression. Through emotional expression we can release the repressed, chronic tensions brought forth by the frustrations and deprivations in a person's history.

These tensions form the basis of all psychosomatic manifestations. The way the patient expresses him/herself in bodywork is also material in character analytical work. "The muscular and character armours are, therefore, completely identical." As a conseqence of this the character features can be made egodystonic by breaking down the muscular armour, and, vice versa, muscular tensions can be solved by breaking down the character armour. Depending on the present phase of the patient, sometimes it will be convenient to work on the body and some other time on the character. These are the two faces of a coin which we constantly have to integrate and analyze as a unit, if we want to obtain a good analysis of the character resistance, and hence to increase the patient's contact with him/herself and his/her awareness of the causes of suffering.

6. Please provide evidence that your approach offers a clear rationale for treatment / interventions facilitating constructive change of the factors provoking or maintaining illness or suffering.

The function of the armour is to defend against aggressions and frustrations caused by the surrounding world. The notions of defence and adaptation are central in the orgonomic theory about the formation of character-muscular armour in the human organism. The formation of character armour (or the character) results from the need to adapt oneself to a hostile environment, however it impedes meeting the basic needs of a human being. The muscular armour refers to a state of neuromuscular contraction or inhibited expansion, which is due to the repression of the basic libidinal needs.

This effort to defend oneself has a price. This can, for example, be seen in the case of amoeba which sacrifices its capacity to move when in a hostile environment. The human organism also sacrifices a part of its natural capacity for expansion, for being in contact with others and with itself. Therefore, it reduces its energetic metabolism in exhange for a new equilibrium where the anxiety caused by the loss of contact is less painful.

When the defence function of the armour is hindered or is too intensive , a pathology occurs.

Symptoms are a signal, this signal tells us that something has happened to the organism, something that makes the hidden equilibrium inefficient and, therefore, a new functioning basis is needed.

A recent discovery in biology confirms this hypothesis: it has been demonstrated that a cell is constituted of microtabelulas, a 3D reticule, composed of actin and myosin fibrils (basic components of the muscular system) that cover the cytoplasm entirely. This reticule has the power to change the structure of the cell by reacting to any alterations in its environment. When the environment is negative to the life of the cell (temperature decrease, change in calcium or magnesium concentrations), the reticule contracts itself and the cell adopts a spherical shape, which is an energy-efficient survival mechanism. If these influences are maintained over a long periood of time, the cell cannot regain its original morphology, and, therefore, the cell remains fixed in the contracted, defensive position.

This new finding supports the initial hypothesis of Reich. Continuous stress with its influence on the physiological response systems: (neuromuscular, neurovegetative, neuroendoctrine and psychoimmune), exert a direct influence on cellular functioning Fear constitutes a basic emotion of a living being. This stress will activate defence mechanisms. The basic defense mechanism is a biological contraction of differs depending on the developmental phase in which the stress occured Thus, if a negative stress situation occurrs during the embryonic and foetal periods, this will result in low energy , which makes the organism highly vulnerable to severe organic diseases (authentic psychosomatic biopathies). If the harmful influences happen during the embryonic stage, with a severe cellular injury, recovery is almost impossible. During the foetal period the neurovegetative predominance would provide better mechanisms for adaptation and possibilities for treatment.

If a human organism has to experience extensive fear during the period after birth, when the neuromuscular system prevails, it will provoke a more structured defence with a sympathic reaction in certain muscular segments. Instead of general blocking, the blocking is now found in certain parts of the body, which makes the therapeutic task easier and the prognosis better.

Stress situations during later developmental stages can generate reactive biopathic situations of the somatic type and the symptom will have a more symbolic function. Therefore, that the meaning of the symptom will be determined both by the person's structure,and the developmental phase in which the stress occured. For example the symptom diaorrhea may occur before an acute stressful situation in which aggression cannot be expressed or in a psychosomatic illnesses such as ulcerous colitis. The intestine becomes the organ for the expression of aggression. If the situation becomes chronic it will weaken the energy basis of the intestine,eventually resulting in degenerative changes that can even endanger life.

2. The development of the infant object relations and the degree of the formation of character armour (infant history)

During childhood the failure of a satisfactory affective and libidinal development may generate anxiety, inhibiting impulses and memories, and relegating them to the unconscious. This results in a visceral and neurovegetative contraction. This contraction is mirrored in chronic muscular tensions that may lead to later functional organic diseases.

Patterns of chronic muscular contractions together with the inhibition of respiration accompany character attitudes and defence mechanisms .

The armour as a defensive element has the function of making the conflicts easier to live with but also lessens our capacity for self awareness and contact with the world and our desires.

The psychophysical structuring develops in an integrated manner from the least complex functions to the most specialized ones (e.g. from motility to language) and following cephalo-caudal flow, from the functions of the first segment (eyes) to the seventh segment (pelvis and genital sexuality).

Disturbances occur when the bioenergetic metabolism is altered, when a person experiences overwhelming visceral anxiety in an ecosystem (maternal uterus, maternal organism, family nucleus, social situation), which does not satisfy the necessary affective-sexual demands of the moment.

The formation of the armour also follows a cephalo-caudal flow , parallel to the organic development of a person. In the course of time this armour produces symptoms both at somatic and psychic levels. The task of vegetotherapy is to pursue the deconditioning of the patient's basic emotional reactions to traumatic situations that have been recorded in their bodies. This is done by facilitating the expression of repressed emotions and thereafter talking about the experience in order to elaborate and integrate it.

- Integration of psychosomatic functions through an adequate interaction of the cognitive (cortex), emotional (limbic) and visceral functions.

From the dynamic point of view , neurosis is a static condition which inhibits expansion and growth.

The gradual working through of the sexual phases will enable the patient will reach a degree of genitality sufficient for them to become a protagonist of their own history and to be able to better deal with the actual external world.

7. Please provide evidence that your approach has clearly defined strategies enabling clients to develop a new organisation of experience and behaviour.

Character Analytic Vegetotherapy has strong and clear strategies for helping clients towards transformation of experience and behavior especially with awareness about their bodies, sensations, emotions and the interactions of the cognitive processes and behavior. The aim of deep therapy is that the client would be able to develop a new organisation of experience and behavior. Character Analytic Vegetotherapy is developed for this purpose. One part of the therapy process is to help the client to become aware how his specific behaviors and action patterns is resulting in her suffering and posible symptoms. This is very well discribed in the writings of Wilhelm Reich. Usually these patterns have become part of the character and are therefore very difficult to change because they are part of the autonomous nervous system and outside of clients awareness.

Character and its bodily equivalence is an adaption to a specific interplay between the organism and environment. When a person is growing older the environment has changed but the specific behavior and experience patterns has remained for most part unchanged.

Character has so the speak become a cage from which the client can not find a way out. The client is not living totally in the now. The task of the therapist is to help the client to become aware of her character, her ways of reacting, behaving, feeling, thinking etc. What is specific to Character Analytic Vegetotherapy is that this method enables to client also to become aware of her bodily reactions, breathing, sensations as part of her character and her way of being.

Instead of using clients images and associotions as a beginning point for inquiry as in many verbally oriented psychotherapies, the character analytic vegetotherapist is first paying attention to the sensations, emotions, breathing and bodily expression including facial expression of the client.

Never the less at some point the character analytic vegetotherapist might point out discrepancies in clients behavior with some obvious questions as well as in the following example.

(Let us say there is a client who have difficulties in setting boundaries. Time after time she keeps telling the therapist how this and that person was telling about herself and the client did not have an opportunity to say a word. At the beginning of the therapy the client did not have a thought that she could affect the situation. It has been like that ever since she can remember.

If the therapist is now empathically posing a simple question: have you ever thought why do you listen to that if it makes you feel bad, it is most likely that the client does not understand the question at all. That question does not exist for her. It has never occurred to her, that she could do something differently. The client would most likely give many explanations why she is doing that. One explanation could be: if I do not listen to my friend, that would lead to a conflict and the friend might abandon me. That could lead the therapist to assume that here we might have an abused child and maybe a narcissistic character with the problems of 1)merger, 2) twinship, 3)mirroring, 4) idealization as described by Heinz Kohut (1977)[25].

Sometimes a simple question like that might even evoke some childhood memories of the client. Depending on the phase where the specific therapy process is, that is to say, whether the character resistance has been dealt with, the therapist might continue with going deeper in the to "content material"(libidinous) and then link the sensations and emotions of the experiences to the present time.) It has to be emphasised, however, that the desired change in the client's behavior and her way of experiencing will take time. As the formation of the character and the corresponding muscular armour (including the permanent changes in the autonomous nervous system) slowly took place during the developmental years of a child, the dissolution of these formations has to take place step bt step. Furthermore, once achieved the establishment of new ways of behaving and experiencing also demands plenty of practice. And after all, maybe the most important thing a psychotherapist can do is to evoke the clients decision to change, to mature and to give proof that it is possible.

8. Please provide evidence that your approach is open to dialogue with other psychotherapy modalities about its field of theory and practice.

Historically Character-analytic vegetotherapy has grown out of a dialogue with Freudian psychoanalysis. During the basic developmental years of character analysis it was in open dialogue with the main lines of psychoanalytic thought and its ideas where presented and corrected in congresses and international journals. This process has continued after Reichs death in 1957. The representatives of Character-analytic vegetotherapy have been continuing this tradition. Its members have been actively been writing in international journals (f.ex. "Energy and Character"[26])and its own journals and they have been participating in arranging and participating in international congresses worldwide.

The practical and theoretical dialogue with other modalities among the body oriented psychotherapy models have been strong; bioenergetics, biosynthesis, Hakomi, biodynamic, Gestalt Therapy etc.

On the other hand group analysis theory[27] is used in Character-analytic vegetotherapy practice when group therapy is used.

Writings and practices of many other recognized theoreticians in the field of psychotherapy are used in the trainings of Character-analytic vegetotherapy f.ex. Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg.

Also family therapy, couple therapy and systematic models and practices are used by Character-analytic vegetotherapy practicioners.

9. Please provide evidence that your approach has a way of methodically describing the chosen fields of study and the methods of treatment or intervention which can be used by other colleagues.

The methods of treament and intervention that are used in Character-analytic vegetotherapy are described first of all in the writings of Wilhelm Reich and in several books written by others and journals published and distributed throughout the western world. A list of some these books and journals the reader can find at the end of the text. Many books and journal include numerous case studies, which show how these methods have been used in practice.

Some representants of Character-analytic vegetotherapy have been giving demonstration workshops in the method of Character-analytic vegetotherapy in many international congresses in Europe, Usa and South America. There are also commercial videos for sale which briefly describe the methods.

Because so many other modalities have been building their method on the foundations of Character-analytic vegetotherapy, this must mean that the question number 9 is answered.

These modalities are among others Bioenergetics, Core Energetics, Biosyntesis, Hakomi, Biodynamic etc. Many psychoanalysts have also used the concepts originated from Character-analytic vegetotherapy in their theories. These are for example Karen Horney, Fritz Perls, Stephen Johnson, Otto Kernberg, Veikko Tähkä.

10. Please provide evidence that your approach is associated with information which is the result of conscious self reflection, and critical reflection by other professionals within the approach.

Character analytic vegetotherapy has a long tradition of being critized by other modalities of psychotherapy. It has often been in a postition where it has had to defend its position. It has never gained a power postition in one single country.

Therefore, the members of the character analytic community have always been challenged for critical and conscious self-reflection.

Critical reflection of the Character Analytic Vegetotherapy method within the movement has been taking place from the very beginning. During Reichs time it first took place within the international psychoanalytic movement and later, after the expulsion of Reich from the movement, in the meetings, conferences and journals headed by Dr. Reich in Norway and in the USA. After Reich there has been numerous journals, in a number of different languages, both in the USA and Europe, where knowledge, critical views and innovations are shared, to name a just a few them: The Journal of Orgonomy (Usa), Orgonomic Functionalism (Usa), Pulse of the Planet (Usa), Energia, carácter, sociedad (Spain), Ströme (Germany), Emotion (Germany), Impuls (Norway), Juokseva Koira (Finland), Energy and Character (England).

In USA, South America and Europe national institutes have regular meetings and conferences, where critical reflection by other professionals within the approach is practised. We also have a long tradition of teacher/trainer exchange within the different national institutes. In addition we have in Europe the International Federacion of Orgonomic Colleges (IFOC), where eight European national institutes and one Brazilian institute meet annually to share knowledge and critical views on each others. Up to now the IFOC has no political function and its purpose is to advance knowledge, and research in our field.

Many of the members of the national institutes take part in international congresses of body-psychotherapy and psychotherapy in Europe and in the Americas. Many of them have also been, and still are, in the arranging committees of the international congresses.

Three of the European institutes are also memebers of the Forum in the European Association of Body-psychotherapy (EABP). The Forum is a forum for bodypsychotherapy schools and institutes of the EABP. Within the Forum mutual visits and assesments provide a good oppurtunity for critical reflection and self-reflection.

11. Please provide evidence that your approach offers new knowledge, which is differentiated and distinctive, in the domain of psychotherapy.

Based on the fact that character analytic vegetotherapy, more than any other branch of psychotherapy, takes into account the functionl unity of the mind and body, the contribution of new knowledge it offers in the domain of psychotherapy is differentiated and distinctive . True, there are studies within cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy and within the field of psychology about various aspects of psychosomatics, physical reactions to certain stimulae, etc. but these tend to be peripheral to their main body of work. Even in the work of Rossi[28] which stems from Milton Ericssons hypnotherapy and takes into account the effect of hypnotic phenomena on somatic symptoms, the focus is primarily on cognitive processes and little attention appears to be paid to the body except as it is affected by mental activity.

One aspect of the body-mind unity we study and pay attention to is the connection between autonomous nervous system, emotions, and character. For example, there is a high correlation between the client's emotional states and her unconscious breathing patterns, and one significant way of working in character analytic vegetotherapy is to focus on this and explore different ways of breathing and the effect breathing patterns have for one's mental and physical health. The importance of breathing for health is not specifically new knowledge, but clinical experience in character analytic vegetotherapy has increased and refined that knowledge. Breathing patterns is certainly one concept that many psychotherapists have learned from Reich and other character analytic vegetotherapy practioners.

In character analytic vegetotherapy breathing is used psychotherapeutically, in other words, character analytic vegetotherapy is not a method of teaching how to breathe correctly . We do not focus distinctively on the breathing of the client, but always explore it in connection with her emotions and verbal communication.

In breathing the autonomous nerve system and conscious will are interlinked and through the breathing one can get in touch with the unconsciousness.

In psychotherapy physical work, direct work on the body, movement and expression has led directly to new insights in psychotherapy.

Another area we offer new and distinctive knowledge is the area of physical contact, or touch, in the therapeutic setting. In character analytic vegetotherapy psychotherapists may touch their clients - and they acknowledge it. Other psychotherapists might do, or might not do, and often it is unacknowledged or theoretically restricted. As touching has been, and still is, a contentious issue in the field of psychotherapy, and as it has been used for more than seventy years in character analytic vegetotherapy, much has been written about the effects, the ethics and the constraints of touch in the history of character analytic vegetotherapy.

For example, the relationship between touch and transference has been widely discussed among the tradition of Character Analytic Vegetotherapy. Furthermore, as the permission to touch has become ever more restricted because the ethical cases and litigation in the courts (as is happening in America), the exponents of character analytic vegetotherapy will have an increasingly important challenge to speak for the permission to touch the client.

In character analytic vegetotherapy we use touch for different purposes. For example, the therapist may lightly touch or massage a tensed muscle of the client in order to make her aware of the tension and/or to facilitate the reduction of the muscular tension, or to increase it.

The purpose of a touch may also be to get more information about the state of a muscle (and connective tissue), or to support and soothe the client or to express acceptance to her. A touch may also be needed to facilitate and support the establishment of new breathing patterns and bodily movements.

The meaning of physical touch has been much studied within our tradition. One of the best known researches in this area is Eva Reich, who has studied the importance of touch for babies and who introduced the baby massage. We see our important task to inform people about the varieties of touch, about the subtleties and complexities, positive and negative effects of touch, about indications and contraindications of its use.

Character analytic vegetotherapy has also contributed to the recent development in the treatment and studies of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), by offering new knowledge about the importance of autonomic nervous system and limbic system function in PTSD. As we know Freud considered the tendency to stay fixated on the trauma to be biologically based. After severe shock the dream life continually takes the patient back to the situation of the disaster from which he awakens with renewed terror. The patient has undergone a physical fixation to the trauma. Biological, or bodily, consequences of traumatic situations were further investigated by Reich.

Many psychotherapy models addresses the cognitive and emotional elements of trauma, but lacks techniques that affect directly with the physiological aspects, despite the fact that trauma profoundly affects the body and many symptoms of traumatized individuals are somatically based. Altered relationships between cognitive, emotional, and bodily levels of information processing are also found to be implicated in trauma symptoms. In the treatment of a trauma, character analytic vegetotherapy integrates sensorimotor processing with cognitive and emotional processing. Unassimilated somatic responses evoked in trauma involving both arousal and defensive responses are shown to contribute to many PTSD symptoms[29] [30] and they are important elements in the use of Character Analytic Vegetotherapy. By using the body (rather than cognition or emotion) as a primary entry point in processing trauma, character analytic vegetotherapy directly treats the effects of trauma on the body, which in turn facilitates emotional and cognitive processing. This method is especially beneficial for clinicians working with dissociation, emotional reactivity or flat affect, frozen states or hyperarousal and other PTSD symptoms. Character analytic vegetotherapy is emphasizing sensorimotor processing techniques which can be integrated with traditional approaches that treat these symptoms. The ability of the therapist to interactively regulate clients' dysregulated states and also to enhance the client's awareness of her inner body sensations is crucial to this approach, Reich was very interested in finding a physiological basis for the experince of pleasure and anxiety. In this road two other researcers besides Freuds psychoanalysis made a great impact on him. First one was doctor L.R. Müllers investigationes on the nerve system. Third edition of Müllers book "Die Lebensnerven[31]" came out in 1931, where he presented for the first time in the history of medicine the autonomous nervous system, which today is common knowledge in medicine. Today our knowledge about the nervous system is much bigger and we know now that the autonomous nervous system is much more complex than what Muller thought. Never the less, to our knowledge Reich was the first the integrate the new knowledge about neurophysiology into the psychotherapeutic practice.

Another researcher who had great impact on Reich and character analytic vegetotherapy was the internist Friedrich Kraus[32]. Kraus had published in year 1926 a book called ” Allgemeine und Spezielle Pathologie der Person”. Kraus showed, that living tissue consisted of colloids and mineral salts, which when dissolved with body fluids functioned as electrolytes. This meant that there exists a kind of bio-electrical system in the body. Kraus thought about this system was that it was a kind of rely mechanism, which stored electrical charge (energy) and recharges (action).

Kraus started to use a new concept which he named "Vegetative Strömüng" (vegetative streaming), which referred to electrical like streamings in the body.

To conclede, the resarch on character has also continued after Reich. For example, the concept of character has been reformulated, the systemitization of different character types has been carried out and there are ongoing studies on character and its function as resistance adn main defence against healing process. Reich's theory of character has been further developed among others by Ellsworth Baker, John Pierrakos, Alexander Lowen, Ola Raknes, Tage Philipson[33], Nic Waal, Rolf Grönseth and Federico Navarro, just to mention a few.

12. Please provide evidence that your approach is capable of being integrated with other approaches considered to be part of scientific psychotherapy so that it can be seen to share with them areas of common ground.

Modern psychotherapy can be seen to have started with Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer and with their concept of resistance. That patients were resisting the treatment was the astonishing and groundbreaking observation of Breuer and Freud. That observation was the foundation of a new paradigm. We would claim that any scientific psychotherapy share the resistance concept as common ground. Most of the different known methods of psychotherapy deal implicitly or explictly with the fact that the patient/ client is resisting the treatment. Character Analytic Vegetotherapy has ever since Reich been developing methods, and theory to deal with resistance. The whole character theory grew out of the concept of resistance.

As character analytic vegetotherapy grew out of Freuds psychoanalysis, it has a lot in common with all the so called dynamic and analytic traditions.

For example, we share with other dynamic/analytic methods the concepts of: resistance, positive/negative transference, countertransference, defence mechanisms (character), consciousness, unconsciousness, we also share their standpoint on the crucial importance of early object-relations, of the sexual development in childhood (different sexual phases), of unconscious motives for ones behavior. In other words, we, take into account the phenomena of transference and resistance and work with them. Thus the therapeutic relationship between the client and therapist is important for us aan invaluable tool in the work.

On the other hand, there are many body-oriented psychotherapeutic approaches that have grown out of the character analytic vegetotherapy or have integrated essential parts of it into their own methods and theory. For example, Alexander Lowen developed Reich's method into bioenergetic analysis, and his co-founder John Pierrakos integrated bioenergetics, and spirituality into core energetics. Gerda Boyesen combined basic elements of character analytic vegetotherapy and Bulow-Hansens's physiotherapy method and developed biodynamic psychology on the basis of them. Finally, biosyntesis (David Boadella), which has been accepted by EAP as a scientifically valid psychotherapy, was developed on the theory and methods of Ola Raknes and Reich combined with some elements of Dr. Frank Lake's prenatal work in clinical theology as well as some elements of Stanley Keleman's work. Even Frank Lake's and Stanley Keleman's work were strongly influenced by character analytic vegetotherapy.

Edward W.L. Smith[34] could be mentioned as one among many other authors who have recognised the impact of including methods developed originally by Reich into psychotherapeutic work. Character Analytic Vegetotherapy have without any doubt contributed over and over again to several areas of psychology and psychotherapy. Pre and Perinatal Psychology is one of the areas where Character Analytic Vegetotherapy have contributed.

According to Heward Wilkinson[35], the senior editor of the International Journal of Psychotherapy - the official journal of the EAP - "body-based psychotherapy" is the fourth major direction helping to integrate aspects of psychodynamic, humanistic-existential, and behavioural-cognitive psychotherapy whilst also presenting challenges and this approach "straddles the divisions between humanistic, psychoanalytical and cognitive-behavioural approaches. As Character Analytic Vegetotherapy is essentially "body-based psychotherapy" and in a way the original body oriented psychtherapy, this quote really applies to us and we do agree with Wilkinson.

Thus the areas of common ground we share with other psychotherapeutic approaches are many and varied. For example, there is a common assertion that the body affects the mind and the mind and vice versa. This is a continual two-way process. The aetiology of many physical symptoms is often found to be in a weakness of the body as a consequence of psychological reactions to trauma. What is also common is that the healing or resolution of many psychological and emotional problems is unable to be completed without significant reference to the body, the physiological and the psychosomatic areas. However, in spite of the common assertion about the significant body-mind relationship, it seems that most psychotherapeutic approaches are biased in that in practice they pay more attention either to the mind or to the body. That is to say that in general the dynamic and analytic approaches tend to neglect the body, and the body-oriented therapies tend to neglect the psychic, and especially relational, issues in practical work. Character analytic vegetotherapy strives to combine the two sides also in practical work. It could be said that as an offshoot of psychoanalysis and as the cradle for many body-oriented approaches character analytic vegetotherapy forms a bridge between the two kinds of approaches. From this brdge we want to look to both directions and learn from others as well as to offer them our insights and findings.

With respect to practical work, the character analytic vegetotherapy shares with the other approaches the therapeutic setting: a consultation room where a psychotherapist and the client meet at regular intervals. The meetings are pre-fixed and the length of the session is always the same . The client pays the therapist for the treatment and in general, this is the only exchance between them. In character analytic vegetotherapy we adhere to ethical rules as well as to the abstinence rule between the therapist and the client. The relationship between the therapist and the client is professional. Everything that takes place ever since the client enters the consultation room is part of the treatment: greeting, not greeting, shaking hands, not shaking hands etc. For example a psychotherapist can not treat her own mother or a child or a spouse.

13. Please provide evidence that your approach describes and displays a coherent strategy to understanding human problems, and an explicit relation between methods of treatment/intervention and results.

W. Reich clearly stated that human suffering was caused by the influence of the surrounding world, or by the social ecosystem, as we call it to day. In 1934 he wrote: "When needs are partly satisfied, there is harmony. But in most cases our needs are opposed to the social order, first represented by the family and then by the school." Reich introduced revolutionary concepts into the field of health care and gave both a theoretical and practical basis for bodypsychotherapy. His concepts not only questioned the mechanistic view on the issues of health and illness, but also the various patterns of family relations which mirror the dynamics of a social system and which progressively tend to get more unnatural. Reich's insights have later been applied in the fields of psychosomatic medicine, humanistic psychology, social psychology, and they formed the basis for the bodypsychotherapeutic approach.

According to Reich the basis of a disease is to be found in the disturbance of emotional expression and satisfaction in childhood as well as in an unsatisfactory sexual-libidinal development. This generates energetic excitement and anxiety inhibiting free pulsation and memory, which is repressed into the unconscious. As a result there will be responses to fear at the visceral, neurovegetative and muscular levels, which can be recognized, for example, as chronic muscular tensions. These, again, in the long run can produce functional disturbances.

In our clinical practice working with psychosomatic disorders we must follow a methodology that supports the individual's own capabilities without disrupting his/her precarious equilibrium. This is due to the fact that every unhealthy organism tries to avoid a situation of a greater non-equilibrium. Therefore, a mechanistic approach in which the symptom is simply removed can be detrimental, since it does not take into account the whole system. For example, in some cases avoiding phobia can bring forth depression, and the cure of eczema can provoke asthma.

We do not favour direct attack on the character-muscular armour or the generation of violence by forcing the organism's biological rhyhtm. Character analytic vegetotherapy aims at provoking change but from the center of the indvidual by recovering the biological rhyhtm. This is secured by basic premises we start from: The therapist's perception capacity must not be limited by his/her character-muscular armour, that is, he/she has to be sufficiently able to recognize and to be in contact with expressive movements, emotional expressions, in short, to understand the real meaning of bodylanguage. To ensure this, the trainees have to undergo their own personal therapy during the training program, which enables them to attain a sufficient perception capacity, receptivity and empathy. This will become more and more evident in a clinical practice.

Actually, what we are talking about here is the question of the influence the experimenter exerts on the experiment, which has been studied in quantum physics for years.

- maturation of the ego towards a flexible character, which Reich called "genital character" (mature personality).

- a coherent integration of the psychosomatic functions through an adequate interaction between the cognitive, emotional and limbic functions and the visceral functions.

We see our work as a way to induce a change by providing means by which a patient will become more capable to make contact with his/her reality and the surrounding world, and by making him/her more conscious of:

- the social, professional, cultural and economical elements that limit his/her existence and cause resignation and a masked depression.

To ensure the fullfilment of the above mentioned objectives we regard it important that there will be available for a therapist:

Our model tries to maintain a coherence between our clinical goals and the therapeutic method.

Therefore, we underline the difference between the brief character analytical work ( Serrano 1990[36]) and the character analytic vegetotherapy as deep psychotherapy (Reich 1949, and Navarro 1989[37]). To maintain that coherence, the therapeutic setting as well as the contract will be different depending upon whether it is the question of a brief psychotherapy or of a deep vegetotherapy.

- punctual and analytical interventions by the therapist Brief character analytical psychotherapy differs from the above in the following facts:

For a therapy to have a successful outcome the following requirements must be met:

- a necessary level of insight, comprehension and rationalization in the patient.

14. Please provide evidence that your approach has theories of normal and problematic human behaviour which are explicitly related to effective methods of diagnosis/assessment and treatment/intervention.

Character analytic vegetotherapy offers a theory describing normal and problematic human behaviour, including methods of assessment and intervention. Character analytic vegetotherapy has clear desciptions of healthy and dysfunctional human sexuality. There are also descriptions of the correlation between psychological and social skills on one hand and bodily posture and movement, respiration, muscle tonus and functioning of the autonomic nervous system on the other (W Reich, Character Analysis and Function of the Orgasm). These patterns of bodily function ( character armour ) are dynamic and are related to normal and delayed psychological development and both childhood and adult traumas. Reich related the patterns of character armour to different states of psychological functioning and that without a reduction of character armour during psychotherapy the persons development would be hindered and their contact with the emotional content of their neurosis would be reduced. Changes in psychological health would be mirrored in changes of the physical holding patterns. Reich first presented his work at the 10 th Psychoanalytic Congress in 1927.

For Reich an important ætiological factor of neuroses was the sexually repressive attitudes in society. In response to this he created clinics for sexual education and guidance (SexPol--still in existence in Finland). He was also engaged in childrens upbringing and education and family structure.

15. Please provide evidence that your approach has investigative procedures which are defined well enough to indicate possibilities of research.

The investigative procedures used now in our postreichian clinic continue the investigations of W.Reich in four different fields:

A) In the field of the prevention of neurosis we study the variables of the surrounding ecosystem which affect a child's psychic and functional pathology. This is done by performing control studies and case monitoring since the foetal period to the adolescence (Pinuaga-Serrano 1997). These investigations have a point of reference with the anthropologic investigations of Reich and have their basis in the studies of Malinowski which demonstrate the importance of a healthy sexual and emotional life in the adult as well as in the maturation process of a child in the absence of psychic pathologies. They are also based on the research work done in Maine during the 50's at the "Orgonomic Infant Research Center".

B) In the field of biology we perform validation of some tools that are in some cases used with character analytic vegetotherapy:

- T-test. Blood diagnosis to detect the degree of predisposition for tissue degeneration. This test was initially developed by W.Reich and professor Roger Du Teil from Sorbone University. Today these studies are carried out by some American and Eeuropean biologists and physicians, for example Redón, De Meo, P. Christ, Senf.

- Orgone Energy Accumulator (OR.Ac) was first scientifically studied by W. Reich. Studies on OR.Ac are continued today by scientist such as J.De Meo and Heiko Lassek and some clinical teams such as the "American College of Orgonomy" and the "Spanish Reichian Therapy School". These studies demonstrate the effectiveness of OR.Ac to enhance cellular pulsation and to prevent neurovegetative dystonia as well as anemia and debility.

C) A recent discovery of the importance of cellular oxidation in psychosomatic and degenerative processes supports the thesis of Reich and the Nobel Prize winner O.Warburg. According to this thesis respiratory inhibition promotes cellular mutation. The respiratory inhibition together with muscular defences, which are formed segmetically depending on a person's maturation process and which are correlated with his/her psychic defences, speak for the need of a psycho-physical therapeutic approach.

We would also like to mention the recent studies on the influence of contact and parental love (healthy family relations) in the functional assessment of hormones as important as oxytocin, corticosteroids and catecholamines[38]. A sufficient care of a child advances the development of a stronger immune system and a more adequate biological rhythm as well as the emotional life.

D) The validation and efficiency of the treatments in both the brief character analytic work and the character analytic vegetotherapy (deep approach) are assessed at the end of the treatment. This is done by means of an exhaustive inquiry to make sure that the goal of the therapy has been maintained and reached.

We emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary teams in clinical practice as well as the need for further training and the evaluation of this training in clinical meetings. We also stress the meaning of supervision and seminaries on clinical cases. We are willing to incorporate theoretical elements and techniques from other psychotherapetic models providing that they enhance the development of our work and its results. In all, we aim at a permanently critical and investigative attitude to empirically validate our work. This is done by working with colleagues and participating in interdisciplinary professional meetings (psychotherapy, psychology, medicine; congresses and scientific meetings). We continuously strive to improve the quality of our work and to expand our knowledge to help enhance the quality of life in this society and for the coming generations. This can only be done by a common effort of all health professionals; an effort that goes beyond certain models and dynamics.

"I think your theories are biological good sub structured, but some items are not yet clear to me or are not mentioned in your answers of the 15 questions. Please apologize me, if I didn?t noticed it/them."

1.You mention as one of your diagnosis techniques that the therapist can feel clients? complaints in his own body, when the therapist touches the client (after some training). In my own known networks this is practiced by so called paranormally gifted persons and often the reliability is doubtful and/or depends of the talents of the (clear-sighted) therapist. The same remarks I want make by the mentioned diagnosis technique whereby the therapist imitates the posture/behaviour/gestures of the client and feels by empathy what the complaints are.

(As a remark: in Hypno Psychotherapy we always ask the client about his/her interpretation of feelings (body-organ- symbolism or visualisations and are we alert not to fill in things for the client. But of course the client also can make mistakes!) Can you tell me how this is trained and practised, in what way the therapy is defined by the therapists? conclusion. Is the client concerned in the conclusion?

I think that the first part of your question refers to question number 2 in the 15 questions:"....knowledge and competence within its field tradition of diagnosis/assessment and of treatment/intervention...".

There I'm trying to explain and formulate four modes of gathering information to make the assessment and possible diagnosis. It seems that my writing there is unclear. Neither vegetative identification nor imitation are diagnosis techniques as you mention in your question. They are as I wrote "modes of information gathering". Now that I read it again, I do realize that one important mode of gathering information is missing. That is transference/countertransference phenomena.

One can compare this with driving a car. The driver is gathering information about the driving and the ongoing situation at least with four different modes: he is using his eyes to look at the road and traffic, his ears to hear sounds from the car or outside, the senses in the body (proprioceptive, kinestetic, vestibular) are feeling the car, whether it is trembling or the driving feels smooth, the kinestetic sense is feeling the position of the car. The driver is making the "diagnosis" of the situation using all modes of information gathering.

So, first we gather the information and then we make the diagnosis. We never make a diagnosis based on one source of information.

Diagnosis and assessment can mean the usual psychological or psychiatric diagnosis, f.ex different neurosis, neurotic character, phobias, personality disorder, borderline, psychosis, different types of schizofrenia etc. This process starts with the usual anamnestic interviews, where the therapist is gathering information about the history, symptoms, somatic sicknesses, family background of the patient etc by letting the patient to talk and by asking questions. The anamnestic interview can take from one to three times of meeting, each meeting 50 minutes.

In this diagnostic process he is using his knowledge of mainly psychodynamic development theory, body reading, characterological structures, the function of the autonomic nervous system, transference/countertransference issues and posibly the more unconscious vegetative identification.

Vegetative identification means that we can in our bodies feel what the other person is feeling. This is something that all mammals do and mostly unconsciously. This might be the mechanism behind the phenomena when a group of birds or deers take off simultaneously.

Biologists have done a lot of research on these themes. They have found f.ex. that the take off reaction in the group of birds happens so fast that the sense of sight is too slow as a means of getting the signal. The reaction happens in 20 milliseconds and the eye of the some bird can process a piece of information in 80 milliseconds.

In our training we try to teach the psychotherapist to be aware of his posible vegetative identification reactions in his body. Ofcourse the difficulty is to learn to know which is the psychotherapists own reaction and what is coming from the patient. This can be gradually learned through careful practice.

Interesting recearch on these area come from different countries. One of them is Finland and the research group of Riitta Hari.

Riitta Hari is a professor at the Academy of Finland and the head of the Brain Research Unit at the Low Temperature Laboratory of the Helsinki University of Technology.

Brain cells communicate via tiny electrical pulses that are accompanied, as any currents, by magnetic fields. Although these fields are extremely weak, they can be recorded outside the head by superconducting sensors. The method known as magnetoencephalography (MEG) is used to accurately record brain activation sequences. For 20 years, Riitta Hari and her multidisciplinary research team have improved magnetoencephalography (MEG) by advances in instrumentation and signal analysis. They have used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to study sensory, motor, and cognitive brain functions in healthy subjects, and have developed clinical routines for evaluation and follow-ups of neurological and neurosurgical patients. Riitta Hari has in recent years studied brain regions that control movements, but that are also activated by the observation of movements by another person.

This mirror neuron system seems to match action observation and execution and may, therefore, constitute an important brain basis for social cognition.

Hari won the Louis-Jeanet Prize for medicine in 2003 and with the help of price she wants to study the effects of observed pain on brain activation of the observer. By her project, she expects to further contribute to our understanding of the neural basis of social cognition. It seems possible that the brain areas involved may represent sites that dysfunction in disorders of social communication, such as autism or schizophrenia.

In general imitation is maybe the most important mode of learning in humans. A child imitates and repeats and repeats.

In character analytic vegetotherapy imitation is tought as one mode of gathering information to make diagnosis. Specially in supervision and training situations imitation has been proven to be an effective method of cognitive understanding of the unconscious expressions, emotional attitudes and transference issues of the patient. To learn to use these methods takes years of practice and structured training.

During the the two-year advanced training trainees are working with clients of their own. We alternate with different didactic methods. Sometimes following the tradition analytical therapy training seminars, the patiens are first presented in written reports and discussed verbally. Then problems are worked on through discussions and role-playing.

Another didactic method which we use could be called imitation. Then the presenter gives no verbal information at all about the patient in the beginning. In stead she is presenting the patient through her own body. She can be asked to stand, walk in to the room or sit down in the way she experiences that the patient would do. During the bodily presentation the other participants observe and "imitate" the presenter. On this basis they form their impressions of the patient, her feelings, character, emotional attitude, transference and ideas about therapeutic interventions. These impressions are then expressed with words and shared in the group.

First then is the presenter allowed to speak. Often she is impressed by the accuracy of the impressions from his imitation of the patient. The students are encouraged not to form a consensus. Contrasting opinions among participants often turn out to represent precise but different aspects of the patient.

William James[39] proposed in his theory of emotions that bodily changes follow directly the perception of an exiting fact and that our emotions are the feelings of the bodily changes as they occur. "Our natural way of thinking about...emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My theory on the contrary, is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exiting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion (p.449)". This old theory is in recent years supported by prominent recearchers like Joseph le Doux (1996)[40]and Antonio Damasio (1999)[41]

Our feelings are the bodily changes produced directly by the outside world or memory or both. This implies that other human beings are represented through the changes they cause in our body. Imitation utilizes this fact.

Wilhelm Reich[42] gave a precise description of how this process takes place in the therapeutic setting. "The patient's expressive movements involuntarily bring about an imitation in our own organism. By imitating these movements, we sense and understand the expression in ourselves and consequently in the patient. Since every movement is expressive of a biological condition, i.e. reveals an emotional condition of the protoplasm, the language of facial and body expression becomes an essential means of communicating with the patient's emotions. As I have already pointed out, human language interferes with the language of the face and body. When we use the term "character attitude", what we have in mind is the total expression of an organism. This is literally the same as the total impression which the organism makes on us (p.362).

Exprimental research (Meltzoff and Moore[43], 1998; Butterworth[44], 1998) has shown that imitation is an innate capacity in humans. This capacity is not automatic but under intentional control. It reveals infants' interpretations of social encounters. In particular imitation is not dependent upon specific senses, but uses a "supramodal" and proprioceptive whole body code that links acts that are seen and those that are done. I.e. the infants know how to use his facial muscles, which he has not seen, to imitate a seen facial gesture. It is also demonstrated that the infant has separate representations of its own and the others body.

The infant distinguishes human acts from other things through imitation. "When a human act is shown to a newborn baby, the act may provide its first "insight" experience. That (seen) event is like this (felt) event". (Meltzoff and Moore[45], 1998) The knowledge of what it feels like to do the act seen provides a priviledged access to people compered with other things.

A further consequence of this is that imitation helps the infant to identify people. Infants reenact behavior to test the identity of the adult and differentiate them from one another. They use body movement pattern and non-verbal gestures to clarify ambiguities about the identity of people. "You are the one who does that and that gesture".

"By six weeks of age distinctive human behavior serve as gesturale signatures, aiding the infant to differentiate individuals within the general class of people: to distinguish one individual from another and to reidentify particular individuals on subsequent encounters". (Meltzoff and Moore[46], 1998). These gesturale signatures are the precursors of our adult recognition that people have distinctive mannerisms, styles and behavior, in short character.

2.According to your answers on the 15 questions most complaints are caused by disharmony in (sexual) development/education, in social environment and built up muscular armour. What are your possibilities for clients with congenital defects e.g. blindness, cistus fibrosis, muscle-dystrophy, dyslexia, but also for the parents of such children ( What about the questions of guilt/responsibility? Didn?t the mother/parents act correct during conception or pregnancy?)

Everything in life,everything that concerns us has both a physical and psychic aspect.

Good food contains minerals, proteins, vitamins etc.and also has metaphorical and symbolic meaning. For the starving man the protiens are the most important, for the birthday child the shape and decoration of the cake. In the hysterical pasient the symbolism of the symptom is predominant, in the patient with a genetic defect the effect and limitation that a symptom places on their lives is more important. The aim for therapy is to enable each patient to be as healthy as possible. Thus for the patient with cystic fibrosis the breathing should be as full as possible within the physical limitations. For the patient with cerebral palsy there should be as little muscular contraction as possible. Both these conditions will also effect the pasients selv image and interaction with others and would be a central issue in therapy. The parents of a child with a congenital deffect may have both realistic and unrealistic guilt feelings. Character analytic vegetotherapy may help by loosening muscular tension, freeing breathing,and increasing bodily awareness in order that these feelings may be shared and placed in perspective.

3.What interventions/techniques offers Character Analytic Vegetotherapy for crisis intervention? And for continued suffering?

Our understanding of trauma is that while intellectual memory is a function of the cortex, affective memories will also be stored in the musculature. In both the acute crisis and long term effects of trauma work on both musculature and breathing may be useful in conjunction with the psychotherapeutic process. These issues are extensively dealt with by Peter Levine in "Memory, trauma and healing", Energy and Character,vol 28 p. 49-57, 1997

A patient comes complaining of too much responsibility and stress at work, that they are tired and burnt out and need rest. The psychotherapy starts and the situation gets a little better. After a few months they report that it was necessary for them to take responsibility for a new work project with even more stress .............

The patient has an anal character, perfectionistic, hard working, controlling, responsible.

When the new project is discussed at work it is in his character to react and say " If no one else can take responsibility then I must" The meaning of his therapy/life is to modify this habitual reaction, to soften his character armour and to widen his character structure. This will enable him to breath more fully, increase the variety in his life, be more creative and feel more joy.

Working in the standing position with focus on contact with the ground, balance, breathing patterns, eye contact, slow movements, pressure against a safe resistance, increasing awareness of bodily sensations are ego-strengthening

6.Are there techniques/interventions for surching, finding and exploring of clients? unknown talents and possibilities?

In " Wilhelm Reich and Orgonomy" (see answer 3) Ola Raknes includes in his definition of health:

The ability to concentrate on a task, capacity for contact with art and nature, the ability to recieve impressions, and a feeling of strength and wellbeing. One could also include improved self awareness and vitality and the ability not to react impulsively.These factors would lead naturally towards a more spontaneous, creative and explorative attitude towards life.

7.Are (some of these) items not in the working field of Character Analytic Vegetotherapy? Or are these items treated in cooperation with other modalities of psychotherapy

Character Analytic Vegetotherapy has existed as an unbroken tradition for over 70 years and cooperates with other forms of psychotherapy, physiotherapy, medical and scientific disciplines as well as educational and childrens institutions. An interesting account of such a cooperative project is A.S. Neills Summerhill School ("Neill of Summerhill" J. Croall, Panthenon NY 1983)

Dear Markku Välimäki, Generally spoken your work would be much better if you could be more precise in answering the questions.

- For me it is not clear how the diagnosis is made. How you describe a certain well-defined category of "illness" which you treat with a certain special treatment. What are your interventions? I get not clear about. You accepted the DSMIV criteria, and what are the diagnostic criteria in Character Analytic Vegetotherapy? And how you use it by which interventions?

-Do you have any double-blind study about the diagnosis of the vegetative identification and imitation?

Question number 2: Please provide evidence that your approach has demonstrated its claim to knowledge and competence within its field tradition of diagnosis/assessment and of treatment/intervention.

We understans that this question is not asking about what our diagnosis and treatment methods are but that our approach has demonstrated its claim to knowledge and competence in this field. Because Character Analytic Vegetotherapy has existed more than 70 years and many other body-oriented psychotherapy approaches have built on it, f.ex. bioenergetics, we think that only that is demonstrating its validity. Also as described elsewhere in the paper, Character Analytic Vegetotherapy has been practiced f.ex. in Norway for 70 years without interruption inside the official government paid psychiatric hospitals and policlinics.

Basic methodology of Character analytic vegetotherapy, including diagnosis and interventions are described in Reichs Character Analysis[47]. As I have tried to describe in the answers to the 15 questions modern character analytic vegetotherapy has undergone some developments since Reichs time. As part of the training several other theories are studied, mainly in psychodynamic tradition, object-relations theory, self-psychology, attachment theory and ego-psychology.

DSM-IV describes behavior and our system starts with etiology or at least is trying to give some picture of etiology. When the character analytic diagnosis is made, it is usually more precise than the DSM-IV. Ofcourse in clinical work it is critical to understand similarities between the character analytic system and DSM to recognize their difference. On the other hand I do not see how that could be described here with a few lines but needs a whole book.

The overlap of DSM-IV and character analysis is probably lowest in the case of borderline and dependent personality disorder. Borderline might be clinically useful but heterogenous diagnosis which might include several etiologies, including organic basis. Individuals with a DSM-IV diagnosis of dependent personality disorder could have an oral etiology or a symbiotic etiology.

Character analytic approach posits that the same basic underlying characterological issue (f.ex. oral or schizoid) may be expressed all along with high, medium, low ego-functioning.

F. ex. schizoid personality disorder would be characterized by a very low level of structural development (ego-functioning). At medium ego-functioning with the schioid chararacter, one is more likely to find the behavior characterictic of the avoidant personality disorder in DSM-IV.

When the characterological adjustment is neurotic (medium to high ego-functioning), one sees the predominance of defenses based on the repression of whatever creates conflict.

Interventions with a neurotic character revolves around the uncovering and resolution of such unconscious conflicts and the relinguishing of these compromise solutions.

On the other hand personality disorder individual is mainly having diffuculty tolerating or containing affect and thus the interventions should be different with the personality disorder individual, that is to concentrate on containing functions, integration and maturation.

Neurotic character can use more "mature" defences to hold conflicting emotions for long times, which is usually not possible for an personality disorder individual, who is splitting and actingout more readily. Neurotic person is often over contained and out of touch with the forces that determine her behavior. Held emotions can poison the individual , leading to classical neorotic symptoms, f- ex psychosomatic illness, compulsions, depression etc.

Both the specific character and the level ego-functioning inside in that character is important to comprehend in orher to lead to correct path of interventions.

One cornerstone in practical work of character analytic vegetotherapy is that we pay atention to the character, that is the form of expression rather than the content of expression as I have described in the answer number four and whcih is very well described in Reichs Character Analysis.

Because the other evatuator Frans Peeters was asking somewhat similar question, I include his question and my answer to that.

1.You mention as one of your diagnosis techniques that the therapist can feel clients?

complaints in his own body, when the therapist touches the client (after some training). In my own known networks this is practiced by so called paranormally gifted persons and often the reliability is doubtful and/or depends of the talents of the (clear-sighted) therapist. The same remarks I want make by the mentioned diagnosis technique whereby the therapist imitates the posture/behaviour/gestures of the client and feels by empathy what the complaints are.

So, first we gather the information and then we make the diagnosis. We never make a diagnosis based on one source of information. As known sometimes two or more sources give contradictory information. Then the contradiction becomes foreground.

Diagnosis and assessment can mean the usual psychological or psychiatric diagnosis, f.ex different neurosis, phobias, personality disorder, borderline, psychosis, different types of schizofrenia etc. Psychotherapy starts with anamnestic interviews, where the therapist is gathering information about the symptoms, somatic sicknesses, history, family background of the patient etc by letting the patient to talk and by asking questions. The anamnestic interview can take from one to three times of meeting, each meeting 50 minutes. In this diagnostic process he is using his knowledge of mainly psychodynamic developmental theory, body reading, characterological structures, the function of the autonomic nervous system, transference/countertransference issues and posibly the more unconscious vegetative identification.

Interesting recearch on these area come from different countries. One of them is Finland and the research group of Riitta Hari.

Riitta Hari is a professor at the Academy of Finland and the head of the Brain Research Unit at the Low Temperature Laboratory of the Helsinki University of Technology.

This mirror neuron system seems to match action observation and execution and may, therefore, constitute an important brain basis for social cognition.

In general imitation is maybe the most important mode of learning in humans. A child imitates and repeats and repeats.

In character analytic vegetotherapy imitation is taught as one mode of gathering information to make diagnosis. Specially in supervision and training situations imitation has been proven to be an effective method of cognitive understanding of the unconscious expressions, emotional attitudes and transference issues of the patient.

William James[48] proposed in his theory of emotions that bodily changes follow directly the perception of an exiting fact and that our emotions are the feelings of the bodily changes as they occur. "Our natural way of thinking about...emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My theory on the contrary, is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exiting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion (p.449)". This old theory is in recent years supported by prominent recearchers like Joseph le Doux (1996)[49] and Antonio Damasio (1999)[50]

Wilhelm Reich[51] gave a precise description of how this process takes place in the therapeutic setting. "The patient's expressive movements involuntarily bring about an imitation in our own organism. By imitating these movements, we sense and understand the expression in ourselves and consequently in the patient. Since every movement is expressive of a biological condition, i.e. reveals an emotional condition of the protoplasm, the language of facial and body expression becomes an essential means of communicating with the patient's emotions. As I have already pointed out, human language interferes with the language of the face and body. When we use the term "character attitude", what we have in mind is the total expression of an organism. This is literally the same as the total impression which the organism makes on us (p.362).

Exprimental research (Meltzoff and Moore[52], 1998; Butterworth[53], 1998) has shown that imitation is an innate capacity in humans. This capacity is not automatic but under intentional control. It reveals infants' interpretations of social encounters. In particular imitation is not dependent upon specific senses, but uses a "supramodal" and proprioceptive whole body code that links acts that are seen and those that are done. I.e. the infants know how to use his facial muscles, which he has not seen, to imitate a seen facial gesture. It is also demonstrated that the infant has separate representations of its own and the others body.

The infant distinguishes human acts from other things through imitation. "When a human act is shown to a newborn baby, the act may provide its first "insight" experience. That (seen) event is like this (felt) event". (Meltzoff and Moore[54], 1998) The knowledge of what it feels like to do the act seen provides a priviledged access to people compered with other things.

"By six weeks of age distinctive human behavior serve as gesturale signatures, aiding the infant to differentiate individuals within the general class of people: to distinguish one individual from another and to reidentify particular individuals on subsequent encounters". (Meltzoff and Moore[55], 1998). These gesturale signatures are the precursors of our adult recognition that people have distinctive mannerisms, styles and behavior, in short character.

You start with a body-mind unit and a holistic point of view, than you come to nucleusmembrane an energetic field and to the organism. Later you come to concept of psychosomatics, which is challenged by you view … It is for me not real clear what your "clear and self-consistent therapy "really is. I think it comes because there is not a good structure in the writing, you bring in to many things and so you lose the structure. Less is sometimes more. Perhaps you could structure this chapter.

Since question 3 is not really clear answered, the same comes later on question 6. You bring developmental things in but it would be clearer if you concentrate more on the question.

What is the t-test? The work about the Orgone Energy Accumulator studied by de Meo and Lassek are not in you bibliography. You also don't mention the studies by name about the influence of contact and the assessment of hormones. I think it is necessary.

T-blood test is described in several books and journals by Reich and his followers. F. ex.

David Boadella (1985): Wilhelm Reich; the evolution on his work[56]. I inlude in this package of answers a photocopy from Reich: Cancer Biopathy[57], pages 37-41. The T-blood test is hardly used in psychotherapeutic practice today. To make the test you have to be a medical doctor and a special training to be able to do the test.

Dr. James de Meo was publishing a journal called "Pulse of the Planet" 1989-1994, ISBN number 1041-5773. F.ex in issue number 3, 1991, you will find an article by Heiko Lassek; Orgone Accumalator Therapy of Severely Diseased People. Dr. Lassek has also published in German language.

As I mentioned in the original answers in page 44 "...that are in some cases used with character analytic vegetotherapy", I want to underline that orgone accumalator is used very rarely and only with some therapists.

Yes, I do mention the studies by name about the influence of contact and the assessment of hormones, page 44, footnote 41.

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Character Analytic Vegetotherapy

The answers of the Character Analytic Vegetotherapy to the EAP’s 15 questions about scientific validation of Body-Psychotherapy

Introduction