Body oriented psychotherapy. The state of the art in empirical research and evidence-based practice: A clinical perspective

Abstract

The heterogeneous field of body oriented psychotherapy (BOP) provides a range of unique contributions for the treatment of mental disorders. Practice based clinical evidence and a few empirical studies point towards good efficacy of these non-verbal intervention strategies. This is particularly relevant for those disorders with body image aberration and other body-related psychopathology, but also for mental disorders with limited treatment response to traditional talking therapies, e.g. somatoform disorders/medically unexplained syndromes, PTSD, anorexia nervosa or chronic schizophrenia. However, the evidence base is not yet sufficiently developed in order to get BOP recognised as suitable mainstream treatment by national health services and their commissioning bodies. Strong academic links are urgently required in order to support practitioners in their efforts to evaluate the clinical work in systematic research. The field would greatly benefit from the development of international higher education training in integrated clinical body psychotherapy, enabling practitioners to obtain a master's degree. From a scientific perspective, projects on the interface between neuroscience and psychotherapy research should be conducted in order to understand more fully the therapeutic processes in BOP, particularly with regard to emotional processing, movement behaviour and body/self perception. Qualitative research is needed to further investigate the specific interactive therapeutic relationship, the dynamics of touch in psychotherapy and the additional self-helping potential of creative/arts therapy components. Provided that these requirements will be fulfilled, BOP could be established as one of the main psychotherapeutic modalities in clinical care, alongside other mainstream schools such as psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural and systemic.

Keywords:

• body psychotherapy
• body oriented psychological therapy
• movement therapy
• evidence base
• research

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Manfred Thielen, Chair of the German Association for Body Psychotherapy, for his ongoing and passionate support in linking academic research initiatives with the day to work of practitioners and Priv.-Doz. Dr. Ulf Geuter, who has been a very important source for information for many years. Nina Papadopoulos and Professor Helen Payne helped me to formulate and constantly update ideas regarding the interface between body and movement psychotherapy. Finally, I want to thank all the colleagues in the field I worked with over the last 25 years, because their experience and therapeutic wisdom helped me to integrate the rich diversity of body oriented therapeutic interventions.