1 L e manual body psychotherapy Michel Heller is remarkable. Unique because of its ambition, the broadness of its approach and the richness of its theoretical connections, it is intended primarily for psychotherapists and written by one of them. It combines an experience of thirty years with encyclopedic knowledge (whether in history of science, history of philosophical ideas on the body and mind, or even concerning many psychological theories in Western and Eastern traditions).
2 In his textbook, Michel Heller reminds us that current body psychotherapy is a theoretical reflection almost millennium, part of a long clinical tradition and intellectual that we can not forget, and helps to better understand the foundations and the prior .
3 This book is therefore an invitation to create links, to broaden ideas that have all too often become implicit, lazy, superficial, because of the daily pressure of therapists to survive professionally. He therefore invites practitioners to broaden their conceptions and to create new frames of reflection, to discover new conceptual anchors to their clinical practice. The patient himself should ultimately benefit as he will interact with therapists who are more open, more critical, more flexible, and therefore more "scholarly".
4 The perspective is holistic, rather than reductionist, which is especially refreshing in our new "Era of the Brain" author and reminds us how important it is to never lose sight of all the connections between the body and the spirits, which links the molecular life to the behaviors and finally to the psychic life, in the variety of the social and cultural contexts where all these levels express themselves. For example, Michel Heller shows us relentlessly that psychic experience is a form of integration of processes that operate both inside and outside the individual, interacting with other individuals, such as the patient and his therapist.
5 Is it necessary to remember that psychotherapy, whatever it may be, whether corporal or not, does not deal with a body, an organism, or a psychism more or less in a bad state, but deals with a relationship? between bodies, organisms and psyches that often suffer.
6 The best proof is the development of the child who, towards the end of the second year, begins to conceptualize himself through the eyes of others (see Rochat, 2008, forthcoming). This transition is marked, among other things, by the appearance of embarrassment, shame, and finally guilt, which are so often the source of ills leading the patient to contact his therapist. But, these evils are not only localized and localizable in the head and the rest of the body of the patient: they are revealed in the interaction with others. Thus, the therapist becomes aware with the patient of his pain. Patient and therapist then become co-consciousof it, making these evils and suffering objectifiable to both. In the therapeutic relationship, they reactualize these evils in order to be able to objectify them and treat them together, with each other, by making them "public", or, at the very least, known to both of them, the time of the therapy.
7 This point may seem trivial, but it is not: in the case of body therapies, when the patient is touched in a massage or guide in breathing exercises, he gives himself to his therapist who becomes aware with him of an experience that becomes public and allows for an exchange on what eventually led them to meet: suffering, pain, question, malaise, curiosity, or even the boredom of being alone and not to be sufficiently recognized by others. Unless it's the simple, legitimate desire to share to feel better.
8 Anyway, the therapeutic effect is fundamentally based on the phenomenon of co-consciousness. It can not be the attribute of the patient or the therapist, but on the contrary the attribute of their meeting.
9 The problems of the relationship between the body, the body and psyche are perennial problems that are part of a long tradition in both East and West. Neuroscience is just a thunderous contribution to this reflection. Its sudden emergence and the magnitude of its influence over the last fifteen years should not blind us and make us lurk in the fact that everything happens inside the individual, especially inside his cranial cap!
10 Rather, as Michel Heller shows in his manual carefully and broadly encyclopedic and truly unique, everything rests not within the individual but to the interface of the bodies, agencies, brains, and all the parallel processes that underlie each of these systems.
11 Progress in neuroscience is just another link in a long history and long tradition of thinking about the relationship between body, organ and psyche. It is these reports, of infinite complexity, that are masterfully highlighted in this author's handbook. The latter manages to treat them in a remarkably clear way, without sacrificing either to the complexity of the problems, or to the economy of an integration into the long tradition of the great currents of thought which have already treated them in the past. centuries and across cultures.
12 Undoubtedly, this manual body psychotherapy is a research tool, reflection and exceptional and unique work for anyone, clinicians or not, who want to understand the ins and outs of the relationship between the body, the bodies and the psyches.
13 I often hear my enthusiasm stunned colleagues say that psychology is still in the spotlight of the New Era scientist what the brain. But are we really about to reduce the human experience to its "substantive" brain matter? Is one, as one insinuates more and more often, at the threshold of an absolute, deterministic understanding of what it means to be alive, in this world, in this body, and especially among other organisms ? No, of course, since every door that opens reveals a multitude of others ...
14 My neuroscientist colleagues are racing but psychology is resisting, in all its "classical" dimensions: clinical, cognitive, developmental, and so on. Psyche is not ready to give up the soul and be embalmed, like the vestige of a primitive, even primary, past.
15 The passion for neuroscience is largely dictated by the exponential advances in brain recording technologies of the past fifteen years, as well as by the huge economic stakes associated with it and whose can not be ignored ' influence on research patterns and trends. However, it does not evacuate the question of the meaning of human experience, as it is inherently difficult to grasp in all its complexity and can not be reduced to isolated brain function outside the world and others. And that's why this manual exists: because we are actually much more than a brain. Because not only is this part of the whole thing that is our organism, but also part of the whole formed by those around us and with whom we interact. In the end, the fundamental question of psychology is not reduced to the understanding of an individual body and brain system, which would be isolable and that we should dissect "to the marrow", as well as is busy decoding the genome and describing it as a single long sequence that combines certain building blocks. No !
16 It is not possible to evacuate the questions and theoretical formulations that are part of philosophical traditions: from the Greeks in the West and for more than twenty centuries in Eastern philosophies and practices, particularly in India. This manual also reminds us of the importance of historically anchoring the question of the psyche in its relation to the organism and finally to the body in the tradition and especially the evolution of the conceptions. This book shows unequivocally that clinical thought and its history do not end today, suddenly and markedly, with the advent of neuroscience, it shows that we are in fact today at the very beginning of this story .
The modes are passing and the technique and the progress that it generates are in constant evolution and mutations. The questions, they continue, like the highest mountains at the top of which we try to reach, poor mountaineers, often poorly prepared to think and treat the suffering of others. As we have already said, this manual is the synthesis of a great theoretical knowledge, with the result of many years of clinical experience. It is also the expression of the inexhaustible intellectual enthusiasm of its author, which is the best equipment to embark on this ascent, to, just as well, make us want to go further in our approach, in our questioning.
Thanks to the author for this courageous, scholarly and ambitious contribution. It's up to us now to make good use of it.
