Guy Tonella
Bioenergetic Analysis • The Clinical Journal of the IIBA, 2022 (32), 61–66
https://doi.org/10.30820/0743-4804-2022-32-61 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 www.bioenergetic-analysis.comI gave a keynote speech about the disease of civilization at the 2nd South American Conference of Mind-Body Psychotherapy, which happened online in November, 2020. Although I had written this article before the pandemics, I had already the feeling that emotion and feeling were going down at the core of biological, social and collective regulation. Emotion’s source had become consumerism and immediate pleasure. Pandemics has brought the same social-political response through the worldwide: confinement and isolation. In these times, the bioenergetic psychotherapist can help to recover individual homeostasis and social regulation.
Keywords: homeostasis, adaptation, emotion as regulating factor, Bioenergetic Analysis
Pensando sobre a Análise Bioenergética hoje (Portuguese)
No 2º Congresso Sul-americano de terapia corpo-mente, que se deu por vídeo-conferência em novembro de 2020, fiz uma palestra sobre a doença da civilização. Embora tenha escrito esse trabalho um pouco antes do início da pandemia, eu já tinha a impressão de que a emoção e o sentimento estavam muito diminuídos no coração da regulação biológica individual e da regulação social e coletiva. A emoção passou a ter como fonte o consumismo e o prazer imediato. A pandemia veio criar uma resposta sócio-política comum a todas as regiões do mundo: confinamento e isolamento. Nestes tempos, o psicoterapeuta bioenergético pode ajudar a recuperar a homeostase individual e a regulação social.
Pensare oggi l’analisi bioenergetica (Italian)
Ho presentato una relazione sulla malattia della civiltà alla 2a conferenza sudamericana di psicoterapia psico-corporea, che si è tenuta online a novembre 2020. Sebbene avessi scritto questo articolo prima della pandemia, avevo già la sensazione che emozioni e sentimenti andassero collocandosi al centro della regolazione biologica, sociale e collettiva. La fonte dell’emozione era diventata il consumismo e il piacere immediato. La pandemia ha portato la stessa risposta socio-politica in tutto il mondo: confinamento e isolamento. In questi tempi, lo psicoterapeuta bioenergetico può aiutare a recuperare l’omeostasi individuale e la regolazione sociale.
Penser à l’analyse bioénergétique aujourd’hui (French)
J’ai donné un discours sur la maladie de la civilisation lors de la 2ème conférence sud-américaine de psychothérapie psycho-corporelle, qui s’est déroulée en ligne en novembre 2020. Bien que j’avais écrit cet article avant les pandémies, j’avais déjà le sentiment que l’émotion et le sentiment s’effondraient au cœur de la régulation biologique, sociale et collective. Le consumérisme et le plaisir immédiat étaient devenus la source des émotions. Les pandémies ont apporté la même réponse socio-politique à travers le monde: le confinement et l’isolement. En ces temps, le psychothérapeute bioénergéticien peut aider à retrouver l’homéostasie individuelle et la régulation sociale.
Pensando el Análisis Bioenergético hoy en día (Spanish)
En la 2ª Conferencia Sudamericana de Psicoterapia Mente-Cuerpo pronuncié una conferencia online sobre la enfermedad de la civilización, que tuvo lugar en noviembre de 2020. Aunque había escrito este artículo antes de las pandemias, ya tenía la sensación de que la emoción y el sentimiento estaban en el núcleo de la regulación biológica, social y colectiva. El consumismo y el placer inmediato se habían convertido en las fuentes de la emoción. Las pandemias han traído la misma respuesta socio-política en todo el mundo: el confinamiento y el aislamiento. En estos tiempos, el psicoterapeuta bioenergético puede ayudar a recuperar la homeostasis individual y la regulación social.
Auf der 2. Südamerikanischen Konferenz für Mind-Body-Psychotherapie, die im November 2020 online stattfand, hielt ich eine Grundsatzrede über die Krankheit der Zivilisation. Obwohl ich diesen Artikel vor den Pandemien geschrieben hatte, hatte ich bereits das Gefühl, dass Emotionen und Gefühle im Kern der biologischen, sozialen und kollektiven Regulierung untergegangen sind. Die Quelle der Emotionen war das Konsumverhalten und unmittelbares Vergnügen geworden. Die Pandemien haben weltweit die gleiche sozialpolitische Reaktion hervorgerufen: Eingrenzung und Isolation. In diesen Zeiten kann der bioenergetische Therapeut helfen, die individuelle Homöostase und die soziale Regulierung wiederherzustellen.
Размышления о биоэнергетическом анализе сегодня (Russian)
Я выступил с основным докладом о болезни цивилизации на 2-й Южноамериканской конференции ментально-телесной психотерапии, которая проходила в режиме онлайн в ноябре 2020 года. Хотя я написал эту статью до пандемии, у меня уже было ощущение, что эмоции и чувства снижаются в основе биологической, социальной и коллективной регуляции. Источником эмоций стало потребительство и немедленное удовольствие. Пандемия вызвала ту же социально-политическую реакцию во всем мире: заточение и изоляцию. В это время биоэнергетический психотерапевт может помочь восстановить индивидуальный гомеостаз и социальную регуляцию.
今日BA之思考 (Chinese)
020年11月，在线上举行的第二届南美心智—身体心理治疗大会上，我做了关于文明之病的主题演讲。尽管我是在疫情之前写的这篇文章，我当时已经感觉到情感和感觉向下去到了生理、社会和集体规则的核心。 情绪的源头已经变成了消耗主义和及时行乐。疫情在世界范围内带来了同样的社会—政治的回应：隔离和疏远。在此期间，躯体动力分析治疗师可以帮助人们恢复个体的动态平衡和社会调节。
“Malaise in civilization: when emotion is no longer at the heart of biological and social homeostasis”: this is the title I gave to my lecture at the 2nd South American Congress of Body-Mind Therapy which finally took place by videoconference in November 2020. I just wrote it before the beginning of the pandemic. I already had this strong impression that emotion and feeling, while at the heart of biological individual regulation, were also at the heart of collective and social regulation.
Emotion is the essential factor ensuring the homeostasis and adaptation of biological organisms and also ensuring the homeostasis and adaptation of social organisms. We act, think, and relate adaptively in response to what we feel and sense within ourselves. What we feel emotionally guides us in our choices, in our decisions, in our actions and interaction. This is how individual organisms and social organisms preserve their balance, their survival, and their creative adaptation.
The worldwide pandemic has disrupted or eliminated some of these regulatory mechanisms, although differently in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, depending on the cultural histories and the conscious/unconscious references each region has. The pandemic has created a sociopolitical response common to all regions: confinement and isolation of varying intensity. This has had multiple consequences:
The emotional life of populations is thus oriented by algorithms designed to influence their tastes and to preserve social, financial, and political interests. Emotion, a source of socio-cultural regulation, is anaesthetized in favor of emotion as a source of consumer and recreational pleasure, stifling reflection and critical analysis of the political, economic, and cultural models chosen by those in power and ordering the lives of individuals and communities.
I have not mentioned, on a larger scale, the conflicts, wars, terrorism, and waves of migration driven by survival and the suffering of the disenfranchised, all of which testify to the failure of intercommunity and international homeostatic processes. Is it because cultural homeostasis extended to the planet itself is only a tentative project, often undermined by conflicts of adversity where domination once again replaces cooperation?
But beware! Communities of human beings are predictable only up to a certain point. The thoughts and actions generated by emotions and attachments sometimes give rise to unforeseen, non-linear behaviors that are out of step with expected evolution and are, in this sense, revolutionary: the need for wild freedom is the fundamental characteristic of emotion and emotional attachment.
Freud, at the dawn of the Second World War, evoked in 1930 a Malaise in Culture. He evoked the “death drive”, a destructive cultural drive, as a central factor that puts our societies in check. Lowen, in 1985, evoked the “narcissistic values” promoted by the Western societies, denying the reality of biological body, feelings, and emotions, to identify only with images and fantasies: images of admired self, images of power and wealth, with sometimes a certain contempt and a certain arrogance towards the other.
If emotion is at the heart of the homeostatic individual and social regulation, a fortiori today in these times of pandemic, then the bioenergetic psychotherapist can intervene since emotion is at the heart of his methodology. We have today, even more than yesterday, a fundamental function: restoring trust within oneself and within social communities, reducing division by increasing cooperation, reducing inequalities, whether they be ethnic, religious, social or gender-based.
As bioenergetic analysts, we can awaken the Nature that has been inscribed in us, in our patients, in the depths of our cells, for thousands of years. Bioenergetic analysis makes more sense today than it ever has. In bioenergetic analysis, we have a rich panoply of exercises and body and emotional exercises centered on the return to a homeostatic balance (between energetic charge through breathing and energetic discharge through movement), on the perception of body sensations (cold/hot, hard/soft, tense/loose, etc.), and on the expression or emotional abreaction (of fear, sorrow, anger, joy, love, etc.).
We have scenarios to explore aggressive force, rage, and destructive impulses in a regulated way (kicking, racket, etc.), and scenarios to explore the tender cohesive forces of love (such as reaching out). We teach our patients, within the therapeutic relationship itself, through intersubjective exchanges and intense transferential moments, to construct, where they are lacking, the forms and limits that we must put on our expressions and interactions so that they are regulated and set in motion other regulating processes, both at the personal, interpersonal, and social levels.
So, I am sure that we can help our patients get through conflicts enriched rather than embittered, that we are able to make fair and creative decisions that beautify our cultures, that we can put an end to senseless and unnecessary fratricidal wars.
This is what motivates me, dear colleagues, to continue even more today than yesterday, this exciting work with my patients and with you within the International Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis, for coming back from isolation to connection: connection with oneself, connection with others, interconnections grounded in the human, cultural and social tissue.
Guy Tonella, Dr, is a Doctor in Clinical Psychology, CES of Psycho-physiology, Certified Bioenergetic Therapist, International IIBA Trainer and Faculty member, Co-Director of the Collège Français d’Analyse Bioénergétique. He was Professor of psychology at Toulouse University for 20 years. He teaches in most European countries and in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, and China. He is in private practice in Toulouse in France.