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Body Psycho-analysis
- Bernard Montaud, 20 years ago, you founded Body Psycho-analysis. Could you shortly describe the nature of this new form of psycho-analysis? - At that time I was a physiotherapist and studying to become an osteopath. Therefore, I quite naturally wondered about the mystery of the body, and particularly about some of its reactions, sometimes likely to awaken an intense emotional world. What was the reason some of my patients suddenly burst into tears or into a nervous laugh although nothing happening outside could justify such a reaction? What was the reason some involuntary bodily jerks, some physical spasms although very conscious, could create a psychic film allowing the person to live a flash-back? Here are the questions I had in 1980 while observing the strange behaviours of some of my patients.
- So, this is how your tehnique was born.You describe it very well in your latest book “ la Psy Nucléaire- un accompagnement du Vivant” . Could you then say that your form of psychoanalysis results from a corporal let-go , that can be compared to the verbal let-go of classical psychoanalysis ?
- Yes, that’s it! When aroused in a certain way, the body is just like a liar caught lying. What does someone caught lying do? Either he becomes violent, or he must justify himself, he must explain why he had to lie this way. Well, it’s the same thing for the body caught having an abnormal tension in a joint or a muscle. And if we let this body know that we have seen his lie, he, too, will try through involuntary, though conscious, spasms or jerks to tell about the time which was the starting point for him to lie this way. Here is, on one hand, how the body will get back to archaic spontaneous motions in a let-go, and on the other hand, how this will give a flash back where we are able to watch what went on, and which will tell the story of that traumatic scene from the past.
-I suppose that alike all psychoanalysis process, watching a scene of the past allows a better understanding of our present life. In fact, the aim is always to find out an explanation in the past for all our present behaviours…
-Yes, I say this in another way, but it’s the same! For me, working out one’s past is meaningful but only if one also works on his present situation. What’s the point to know about our history if it doesn’t bring some “compassion” for our present daily life! I believe that all our self-defeating behaviours are nothing else than/but a cyclic traumatic behaviour leading to a new consciousness level in the ego. Without all these self-defeating behaviours, we would have no means to get aware of ourselves. At least, through this daily small suffering that provides the behavioural traumatic cycle, everyone gets aware of himself and this shapes the ego. Of course this is not the highest self-consciousness! But any way this is what makes each of us be human, different from animals. On one hand, these self-defeating, traumatic behaviours produce suffering, and on the other hand it is really an opportunity for mankind evolution. And you’re right, admitting our ordinary madness, our traumatic stupidity, our natural human imperfection, or our self-defeating behaviours always results from an exploration of our own history. We can say our self-defeating behaviours are simply a data process produced by some software installed during infancy and childhood traumas.
- About traumas, I could read in your books that you accurately identified the different ones each of us have to go through. And when you describe the birth trauma - a concept invented by Otto Rank at the beginning of the previous century - you do it with an unmatched accuracy. - But there’s nothing to be proud about: we’ve been observing births flash backs and the various other traumas for 20 years. When you keep watching the same scenery, you finally gather a better idea of what is going on, and one day, you quite naturally get a clear understanding of the nature of things.As I wrote in “L’accompagnement de la naissance” , it’s true that birth trauma – the one occurring during delivery- is the one shaping our personality. It is the trauma which programs us into a permanent personal imperfection that will then lead to all our self-defeating behaviours. The other three traumas (during babyhood/infancy, childhood and puberty) are mere adaptations of this birth trauma to different maturity situations according to our age. But the four traumas tell exactly the same suffering scenario for a given person. It is a deep source of relief concerning our daily “stupidity” when we realise during a body psychoanalysis that this traumatic consistency is our inner self.
-As a result of your investigations you say that our self-defeating behaviours are merely the present expression of our past traumas. And you add that these behaviours are cyclic- this is a first originality- and you also say they are permanent, until we die – second originality. So what‘s the point working on ourselves if there’s no hope of a change ?
- That’s true, because we have checked it in ourselves and in the hundreds of people who came to work it out with us, we think our traumas produce a sort of subconscious intelligence we call “the traumatic cycle”. This cycle would be able to constantly regulate the psycho-biology of our personality. This traumatic cycle allows our own personality to remain consistent by telling our smallness in any circumstance; and from then we become able to feel ourselves alive. And what you say is right; we do think our personal human imperfection is always permanent. First because without this imperfection, we would become uninteresting beings lacking any personality, but also because there is everywhere a serious confusion concerning people working on themselves. Definitely, the point is not to try to transform our imperfection into perfection because this is impossible and contrary to human nature. No, it would rather be to transform the “unhappy imperfect human being” into a “happy imperfect human being”. Couldn’t new perfection be happy imperfection? Therefore, we don’t need to get rid of our smallness, but we have to learn to smile of it with compassion. Indeed our greatness, which we also call “the Transformed Cycle”, cannot result from anything else than a kiss of inner love to our smallness. When you consider things this way, working on our self is totally different!
See “La psychologie nucléaire - un accompagnement du vivant” by Bernard Montaud and his team, Ed EDIT’AS, 2001. See EDIT’AS website
See “L’accompagnement de la naissance” by B Montaud, 1997. See EDIT’AS website
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