ABSTRACT
I always have believed that the healing power of psychotherapy stems from the client’s self-understanding, which is promoted by the therapeutic process. This view of psychotherapy is an outgrowth of psychoanalysis, which is similarly oriented. If my belief is valid, then the failure of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis to effect significant positive changes in a patient’s emotional health is due to a lack of sufficient self-understanding by the patient. One reason for this lack is that a major aspect of the personality is usually not involved in the analytic or therapeutic process. That aspect is the body and its physical processes of breathing, movement, feeling, and the expression of emotion. When the analytic process focuses solely on mental events, thoughts, images, and dreams, the insights that the analysand gains are relatively superficial.
