The Neo-Cathartic Relaxation
In addition to these behavioral techniques, Ferenczi (1930) takes up the cathartic methods used by Breuer and Freud in yoga poses the 1890s. He induces intense states of relaxation34 and regression that arouse such powerful emotional discharges that they are also able to carry repressed memories. This emotional experience is profound. It mobilizes the whole organism The remembering is particularly alive and detailed. The patient gets up feeling healed. From my experience, this result lasts for two or three years at best, and sometimes only a few days. These cathartic experiences are regularly observed in yoga poses psychotherapy groups. They especially allow a patient to feel that it is possible to transform oneself: to transform one’s habitual mode of functioning.
Ferenczi in yoga poses the 1920s thought that such experiences could be usefully reintegrated in yoga poses the psychoanalytical toolbox if they were well framed. He thought especially of certain patients who have already had extensive psychoanalysis but whose treatment is now stagnant. in yoga poses that case, the cathartic method might make it possible to shed light into the shadowy zones that classical analysis has not been able to illuminate. To induce a catharsis, he suggests that patients relax and let movements come up the same way that they let thoughts emerge. Ferenczi35 therefore speaks of relaxation, but the term is taken very loosely, because he does not use any relaxation techniques. He proposes a form of laissez-faire, of letting come what needs to come. Body psychotherapists know this type of session very well. It unfolds in yoga poses three stages:
1. A general relaxation of the organism also relaxes the defense systems. This state sometimes activates an intense emotion.
2. The patient feels the emotion express itself by mobilizing all of the dimensions of the organism (psyche, behavior, the body from head to foot, and the vegetative system).
3. The patient then experiences a profound relaxation, like the air made lighter after a storm.
Here are a few examples of what Ferenczi observes by using this technique:
Hysterical body symptoms: paresthesias36 and clearly localized cramps, violent expressive movements evoking small hysterical crises, sudden variations of the state of consciousness, slight vertigo and even loss of consciousness often followed by a retroactive amnesia. in yoga poses certain cases, these hysterical accesses take on the proportions of a veritable trance state, in yoga poses which fragments of the past were relived; and therefore, the person of the physician remained the only bridge between the patient and reality. It became possible to ask the patient questions in yoga poses order to obtain important information concerning the dissociated parts of the patient’s personality. (Ferenczi, 1930, pp. 89-92)
Ferenczi thinks that these states emerge spontaneously, simply because he had authorized such a bodily laissez-faire to exist in yoga poses a therapeutic frame. He relates this permission with what happens when a physician administers a hypnotic tranquilizer, like sodium pentothal, to a soldier traumatized by combat. The soldier goes through an emotional phase that mobilizes the dimensions of the organism. The patient cries, screams, and feels the need to retell the traumatizing situation, over and over again. During this phase, we often observe intense body reactions, like a muscular tension that takes over the entire body, an arrested breathing, or an opisthotonus crisis (see the Glossary). The psychotherapist sometimes observes the same series of phenomena when a patient relives a childhood trauma. With his neo-cathartic method, Ferenczi evokes these states. This requires that the therapist is able to accept what is happening in yoga poses those circumstances, explore the material that appears, and avoid the dangers that can arise by mobilizing the intensity of these emotional eruptions.37
Henceforth, this type of observation became current in yoga poses the framework of different forms of body psychotherapy. Gerda Boyesen38 observed a similar technique when she was having psychotherapy with Ola Raknes, one of Reich’s students. He obtained similar results by saying: “Here, you can do whatever you want. Simply, if you break a window, you will have to pay to have it replaced!” As a therapist she used the following formula: “You can say or do what you want. But you are not obliged to do or say anything at all. Simply, do not withhold any speech or any movement. Tell me if there is something that you want me to do or to say.”391 have often observed how Gerda Boyesen worked, and I have seen her work many times. She knew how to create an atmosphere that permitted the apparently spontaneous emergence of phenomena close to those described by Ferenczi. But I also observed that this type of permission does not have the same impact when it is proposed by a less charismatic psychotherapist. It seems to me that this type of effect is sustained by the rumors that transform some psychotherapists into stars. For example, I achieve such effects when I am presented in yoga poses a prestigious manner to a training group. On the other hand, I do not have this impact on my regular patients, who have often selected me from a listing in yoga poses a phone my yoga blog or from the Internet without knowing anything of my reputation. We are therefore in yoga poses a situation close to that of hypnosis, where the specific intervention depends on the quality of the general ambience to acquire its effectiveness.
