Raphaël’s review of Workbook for The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk M.D.: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma > Likes and Comments
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Thank you for the thoughtful reference to Wilhelm Reich.
You’re absolutely right that the idea that the body holds aspects of psychological experience did not originate recently. Reich’s work on “body armor” was indeed one of the early attempts to describe the relationship between psychological conflict and bodily tension.
What interests me in The Body Keeps the Score, however, is not the claim of originality but the integration of these intuitions with contemporary neuroscience, trauma research, and clinical practice. Van der Kolk situates the mind–body relationship within modern understandings of PTSD, memory, and the nervous system.
So rather than seeing the work as entirely new, I tend to see it as part of a longer intellectual lineage—one that begins with early psychoanalytic explorations and continues through current trauma science.
I appreciate you pointing to Reich’s work; it’s always valuable to trace the roots of ideas.
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Thank you for the thoughtful reference to Wilhelm Reich.You’re absolutely right that the idea that the body holds aspects of psychological experience did not originate recently. Reich’s work on “body armor” was indeed one of the early attempts to describe the relationship between psychological conflict and bodily tension.
What interests me in The Body Keeps the Score, however, is not the claim of originality but the integration of these intuitions with contemporary neuroscience, trauma research, and clinical practice. Van der Kolk situates the mind–body relationship within modern understandings of PTSD, memory, and the nervous system.
So rather than seeing the work as entirely new, I tend to see it as part of a longer intellectual lineage—one that begins with early psychoanalytic explorations and continues through current trauma science.
I appreciate you pointing to Reich’s work; it’s always valuable to trace the roots of ideas.
Check out the books of psychiatrist- psychoanalysist Dr. Wilhelm Reich, such as 'Character Analysis'. He was the developer of the ideas of "body armor", the theory that the physical body holds onto trauma and talk therapy by itself is not enough to release certain traumas.
Ida Rolfe was a student of his; she developed the practice of "Rolfing" based on the work of Reich.
So the above cited workbook and the book this accompanied, are not original ideas nor practices.
I would check out the earlier works of Reich, before his severe persecution, by the US government (among others) after Reich moved there, which adversely affected his mental health, especially after they threw him in prison, where he died in 1957.
Also, check out his psychiatrist daughter, Dr. Eva Reich, and her similar work with babies and children.
Note: I know nothing about "Genius Reads", but I do know about Reich's work, having studied it in college, and afterwards with an independent group of students interested in his works.