Body-Based Orientation
The dispute over whether the body is relevant, or perhaps even indispensable for psychological change, was already taking place in Freud’s times. Wilhelm Reich and Otto Rank were the first dissidents to fall out of favour with Freud on the basis of this opinion. To this day, depth psychology has not really recovered from this rejection of the body.
However, since, in order to change self-perception, self-expression and the reading of unconscious processes requires the regulation of needs with regard to the body, competence is required on the counselling side, in order to be able to work with ‘the body’. The works of the following colleagues (to name the most important people) have been utilised in this metatheoretical concept: Moshe Feldenkrais, Ron Kurtz, Ida Rolf, Fritz Perls, Tilmann Moser, Alexander Lowen, Stanley Keleman, Ulrich Sollmann, George Downing as well as David Boadella.