Emotions and defence of emotions as body processes

Abstract

Debating current research on emotion especially psychoanalytic theory of affects the authors argue that emotional processes and processes of defence of emotions coincide with bodily processes. Wilhelm Reich’s concepts of breathing block and muscle armouring as bodily correlatives of repression are used for approaching defenced emotions in psychotherapy by facing breath, body posture and movement. Work with primary emotions or “vegetative affects" is distinguished from work with self-reflective feelings. Affective excitation has a time course and a cyclic structure which can be described by the biodynamic model of the “affective cycle". On the basis of this model the authors discriminate various points of blocks in the affective flow and relate them to different techniques of psychotherapeutic intervention. Moreover they deal with the concepts of “dynamic release" and “dynamic activity" in a model for body-psychotherapeutic work with the primary emotions.

Keywords:
Emotions/affects, emotion research, theory of defence, body psychotherapy.