Talk:Somatic psychology

Somatic Perspectives on Psychotherapy

A very relevant website, featuring monthly conversations with a variety of body-oriented psychotherapists. Published by USABP. I am not adding it directly because of COI. See http://www.SomaticPerspectives.com Wikizeno (talk) 16:03, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Done--Ziji (talk email) 23:24, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Merging with body psychotherapy

I dispute that Body Psychotherapy is a subset of Somatic Psychology. Somatic Psychology is a (particularly US 'label', though it is also used in Australia) for the wider "field" of Body Psychotherapy. This term is generally used more in Europe. Whilst I can sympathise with some of the distinctions noted below by Robert A. Yourell (technically he is correct), the relatity of the situation - in practice - is that the two terms 'Body Psychotherapy' and 'Somatic Psychology' are almost indistinguishable, apart from their geographic differentiations. There are several independent 'Somatic Psychology' Masters degree and Ph.D. university programs in the USA. Details can be found on the USABP [1] & EABP [2] websites. Body Psychotherapy has been accepted as scientifically valid mainstream within psychotherapy by the European Association of Psychotherapy (EAP)[3]. The full submission is available on the EABP website. 'Pre- and peri-natal psychology' is a specific branch of Somatic Psychology or Body Psychotherapy (taught mainly at Santa Barbara University), but considerably limited to certain persectives of the wider "field" of Body Psychotherapy. As indicated in the main Wikipedia article, there are many other branches: Bioenergetics, Biodynamic Psychology, etc. Perhaps this ought to be added to that list. Dance Therapy and Movement Therapy (even when practised as 'psychotherapies' are similarly limited by their origins and perspectives. Courtenay Young[4]: Member USABP, EABP; past-president EABP.--194.176.105.40 (talk) 11:35, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Body psychotherapy is a subset of Somatic Psychology, which is the broader subject area. Somatics is a better fit for the interdisciplinary subject that includes prenatal and perinatal developmental periods where mind/body and character begin to take shape. I recommend redirect body psychotherapy to this page after merging. My agenda is to get the Pre- and perinatal psychology article up to encyclopedic standard in order to support and be supported by the article on body or somatic psychotherapies, since body begins its journey in the womb. Mico I have changed the merge by adding to and from so that the discussion will all take place on this page, seems a quick revert but it struck me as easier to start here than have a discussion running parallel on two pages-- Ziji  (talk)  22:49, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate the added challenge of having to deal with two talk pages simultaneously for the same discussion, however, that is a common practice on Wikipedia, and one reason for that is probably to avoid bias in the discussion. I personally would think that Body Psychotherapy would be the natural resultant article after the merge. I do propose that we do not rush any decision since this topic may not be visited as often as many other topics, leaving perhaps a month at least for infrequent contributors to have a chance to voice their opinions. __meco 07:53, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree about the timing. You may well be right about the natural resultant article but this quote from here: 'Somatic Psychology is the study of the artistic and scientific bases of body-centered psychotherapy (dance therapy and body psychotherapy) suggest the balance can go both ways. Either way I will continue to strengthen both articles awaiting a consensus-- Ziji  (talk)  10:14, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Psychology is a science and psychotherapy is a practice, though unscientific theories have been presented as facts under the banner of psychology. Somatic (or Body) Psychology should be about the theories that body psychotherapy draws from, while Body Psychotherapy should be about body or somatic psychotherapeutic processes and should refer to body psychology for more information and vice versa. The term body or somatic psychology may be confusing, because understanding of the physiology behind psychology is expanding dramatically with neuropsychologists teasing out the meaning of fMRI's and other methods of measurement. The more psychology is understood in physiological terms, the more body psychology may seem quaint as a term. Thus, there should be some commentary to help the reader understand the boundaries of body psychology and how they are changing. It would be helpful to include the distinction that body psychotherapy and body psychology are evolving as practitioners draw from the growing body of science. At the same time, there is increasing accountability placed upon psychotherapists to use methods shown in research to be effective. Thus, the increasing base of research that supports various aspects of body psychotherapy methods should be addressed. It should also be considered that there are methods that stimulate the body through more than words, but may not be thought of as fully belonging to the category of body psychotherapy. Consider EMDR, which uses bilateral stimulation and often elicits reactions from clients that resemble those of other body psychotherpy methods (cathartic responses). Consider so-called energy psychology methods, that use stimulation of acupunture points in the course of procedures that bear some resemblence to reprocessing. It would be helpful to describe the place of body psychtherapy methods in the toolbox of eclectic psychotherapists, as eclecticism (or integrative psychotherapy) is increasingly widespread and well-informed. I hope this is helpful. I have a lot of experience with body psychotherapy, and was initially trained at the Rosenberg Rand Institute for Body Psychotherapy. I'm a licensed therapist. Robert A. Yourell

"Somatic" versus "body"

Since body psychotherapy already is difficult to understand for most clients it is questionable if more confusion is advisable. It should be taken into account that all the associations are using "body": United States Association for Body Psychotherapy European Association Body Psychotherapy Swiss Association Body Psychotherapy etc. Christian Herold June 17, 2007

No NPOV

The article is not written neutrally, and rather makes a number of statements which would be considered pseudoscience.

I have tagged it for the moment, without deleting anything MatthewTStone 01:51, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I found the article to be ridiculously biased, somatic psychology has been marginalised and with good reason in mainstream psychology. The article should reflect that. Effectivly somatic psychology is not recognised by the psychological community due to its very abstract nature. It troubles me that somatic psychology is almost being 'promoted' in this way

Somatic psychology's appeal to bioenergetic fields exposes this whole undertaking as another form of pseudoscience. The NIH website describes the use of therapies involving putative biofields as one of the most controversial of CAM practices, the putative biofields being undetectable by any biophysical means, and the therapeutic effects undemonstrated. In addition, the quantum effects that CAM practitioners appeal to do not operate at the level claimed. The use of Wikipeda in the dissemination of disinformation that could have potentially harmful results on a credulous general public should be vigorously discouraged. Pastor Jennifer

Whole sections of this article (Education, in particular) are being used for personal promotional purposes and as such have no place in a supposedly encyclopedic context. —Preceding unsigned comment added by PastorJennifer (talk • contribs) 15:04, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree 100% with the above critique of this article. Nobody of note in the fields of psychology or psychotherapy accepts Somatic Psychology as viable in theory or practice. Like all "alternative" approaches, it relies upon poorly designed studies, a weak theoretical model, and emotional appeals that "seem" to be correct, but aren't supported by science. This article reads like a commercial for this pseudoscience, rather than a serious investigation into its claims. I realize that, as a fringe subfield, most of those contributing are believers rather than not, but someone needs to fix this so people aren't misguided. Psychology is an important science, and its sister field, psychotherapy, does a lot of good for people. That can only happen, though, if people aren't misled into believing things that aren't true about themselves and others.

Use of Wikipedia as an advertising medium

This article is being used as an advertising vehicle, which is not the intention of an encyclopedic resource such as WP. I have started removing statements that make any type of claim that is not backed up by a reliable source.MatthewTStone (talk) 23:46, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge

The two articles present the two terms as synonymous. I see this is contested above. However, either:

• they are synonymous, in which case they should be merged; or
• they are not synonymous, in which case the distinction should be clarified.

IMHO. /skagedal^talk 20:57, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Correct and they are not synonymous but the language in both articles that defines each subject is hopelessly confused. Literally, somatic psychology means the study of the mind in the body, whereas body psychotherapy means therapy of the mind in the body. Can we start from the premise that Somatic psychology is the title of the book and body psychotherapy a chapter on a specific practice within somatic psychology? The latter can include many chapters, as I have suggested above, the psychology of body in dance, art and music; pre- and perinatal experience of body; mirror neurons, embodiment, etc. But body psychotherapy can only include any of them within the practice of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is a more limited field than psychology and is a subset of it. To clarify this, consider under which title Somatherapy would best fit. Is it a subset of somatic psychology or a subset of body psychotherapy? Somatherapy is, simply put, an anarchist body psychotherapy but it is using emotion, body and group work in a political framework. I think that makes it broader than a body psychotherapy and makes it into a subset of somatic psychology (the parent) not of body psychotherapy (a cousin or sibling perhaps). It's been a while since I've worked on these articles so I will spend a bit of time here having nearly got C-PTSD up to scratch.--Ziji (talk email) 21:29, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Problems with Critique Section

I have been bothered by the critique section this article for some time. There are plenty of valid criticisms that could be made about Somatic Psychology (i.e. the fact that Reich, Archer and Boadella's theories are not founded on clinical research, or that the field has long been associated with New Age and alternative medicine) but the arguments presented here are incoherent and erroneous. Specifically:

- The first statement with ref. to Stenger calls into question whether psychotherapy is evidenced-based medicine or not. Since this criticism applies to all psychotherapy, it is not specific to somatic psychology and does not really belong here.

- The second statement, that the concept of the body is socially constructed, is quite relevant, and for precisely this reason has been engaged with extensively by recent theory in this field. Older Somatic Psychology was both ethno- and heterocentric, and more recent writers have gone to great lengths to both acknowledge and rectify this (c.f. Nick Totton's work and the anthology The Body in Psychotherapy).

- The third statement contains the phrase 'are well argued as a form of neurotheology.' The qualifier 'well argued' is an evaluation and violates NPOV, especially since no reference is given.

- The fourth statement starts out relevant - it's true that Reich's legacy represents a significant piece of baggage for Somatic Psychology. However, the argument then veers off into territory that has nothing to do with the subject at hand; Freud's interest in cocaine and his relationship with Fliess have nothing to do with Reich, and their inclusion evidences fallacious reasoning on the part of the author. One might more appropriately discuss the fact that Reich thought he could control the weather and had contacted UFOs.

- The final statement, that the history of medicine shows ancient precedents to Somatic Psychology, is not a critique. Somatic Psychologists do not claim that they have developed something totally new and without precedent, so this is erroneous.

In the interest of maintaining quality standards, these criticisms out to be replaced with more topical and coherent ones. Since I am a student of Somatic Psychology, however, I am not sure I am the right person to make these edits. Soft helion (talk) 05:33, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

General improvement effort

Hi - I'm interested in working with other editors to generally improve the body of this article and its partner, body psychotherapy (thanks for all the discussion that sets up a meaningful distinction between the two!). The lead of this article seems solid enough but the body text is semi-random and the body psychotherapy page is even worse.

There is a Norton textbook released 2012 on body psychotherapy Body-Psychotherapy that I'm hoping will provide a more systematic ground - but I have a question as I do get a little confused about the primary-secondary source distinction in an emerging and specialist field, so would appreciate discussion about it.

My thought is the guiding principle is NPOV, independence, reliability, credibility - thus as a field develops its own peer reviewed and scholarly published journals and gains wider academic engagement, then in my thinking these sources gain reliability - but then as someone commented, to protect against self-promotion/advertising wikipedia should not report 'what body psychotherapists say about themselves but what others say about body psychotherapists' - except that then you get into a kind of absurd corner where only non-specialists can report on specialist topics therefore reducing reliability and accuracy. Maybe I'm missing something! I know this issue is discussed widely across Wikipedia, so it's an ongoing discussion maybe case by case? anyway appreciate input and collaboration Depthdiver (talk) 18:13, 16 October 2013 (UTC)