First Posted on July 25, 2010 by alisonball

In the late 70′s and early 80′s when I knew nothing about psychotherapy, I was simply looking for a course to do that would help me be able to work more with the inner turmoil of the people I was seeing as a social worker. I frequently knew there were issues they had that needed to be explored, but I really had no idea how to help further. This was so, even though, some of those early social work clients taught me a huge amount and many experiences with them still inform my work today. I had learned a small amount about Gestalt work- and could see the possibilities of using say, a “two chair” technique but I literally felt stuck in my chair. Then a colleague did a massage course that she really valued and, in my eyes seemed to bring about a lot of change in her. I resolved that “one of these days” when I got brave enough, I would do that course.

Four years later, I followed up that lead but was directed instead to a new course in Australia being run by Jeff Barlow. At the time he called it Biodynamic Therapy- largely based on his learning in England and Europe with Gerda Boyesen. I won’t go more into that here now but suffice to say that I began what turned into the first  three year training in this work- a Neo- Reichian therapy. It was only after several years and toward the end of 1986 that we coined the term Somatic Psychotherapy. Until that time the psychologists in Victoria, following the Scientology debacle, had a stranglehold on any name starting with “psych”. This had meant that up until then, in Victoria we were not able to call ourselves psychotherapists. But this course and its required journey into your own personal psychotherapy changed my life.

I think, even apart from the actual experience of therapy, the depth of the change for me was partly due to the integrity with which Jeff Barlow approached his work and the training, and, most critically of all, the essential foundations of the work where mind/ brain/ body/ emotions/ personal history/ words and experience were seen and dealt with as intertwined and inseparable. It seems strange to us now that the name “Somatic Psychotherapy” is being used widely all over the world. But it is also extremely validating of how prescient were Jeff’s ideas way back then. Now, in recent years there has been a massive burgeoning of understanding of the neuro-biological base of attachment and emotional development. Modern scientific techniques enable examination of actual neuronal activity of the brain. At the same time phenomenal scientists like Allan Schore have brought together the early and recent findings of a wide variety of related fields of knowledge in this area. Others- to name a few- like Bruce Perry, Bessel van de Kok, Daniel Siegal, Norman Doidge, Louis Cozolino have expanded the field while Babette Rothschild and Pat Ogden have brought their own slant and techniques to the wider public.

And those of us who have been working in this field go to the lectures and the workshops and the main thing we come away with is a sense of validation for the work that we do. Finally, our work is becoming almost “mainstream”- or at least the ideas that we have taken for granted are. Fortunately, we have had years of training into HOW to use the ideas in the psychotherapy relationship; how to work with attachment and dependency issues, how to work with damaged or stuck emotional development, how to work with the aftermath of abuse whether emotional, sexual or psychological and how to work with the aftermath of trauma.