The Hungarian Psychoanalyst Franz Alexander, described by Sigmund Freud as, "My favorite pupil in America," is largely credited with creating the field of Psychosomatic Medicine in the late 1940s. The ancient Greeks and the French were also aware of mind/body disorders and Hippocrates was the first physician to affirm that mental factors have an impact on health and disease. Psychosomatic Medicine is defined as an interdisciplinary medical field exploring the relationships among social, psychological, and behavioral factors on bodily processes and quality of life in humans and animals. My father, Munjig John Takakjian, M.D., was a student and colleague of Franz Alexander.

 

Psychosomatic Psychotherapy, on its own or in combination with other traditional therapies, treats most disorders and clients and begins with a mind/body foundation. We begin by telling our story or narrative. We go at a slower pace than usual, and we pay special attention to the emotionally important parts of the story, e.g., talking to our mother, worrying about work, conflict in a relationship, etc. Here, we pause and direct our attention to our abdomen (container of our emotions) and think, "How did I really feel about this or that or him or her?" Then we wait. We don't rush to answer the question with our head, we wait for an emotion answer to rise from our body slowly and organically. We are bypassing our defenses of suppression and intellectualization and asking our body what’s really going on. This practice usually takes a minute or two but with practice we can discover how we feel in seconds. 

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After a short period of time an emotion or several emotions arise. Now, we've just discovered strong emotions like anger, sadness, anxiety, or fear that were previously unconscious or blocked! Then we can tie the emotion to the issue or person we started talking about. Next, we express our emotions in a wholehearted and full-throated way. After we've fully expressed ourselves, we relax every muscle in our body, close our eyes, and just feel that emotion energy in our bodies, without thinking, until the emotion dissolves or almost completely dissolves, usually within minutes. We are both talking about our issues and feeling about them as well. 

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Last, we scan our bodies for any lingering areas of tightness or tension in places like the stomach, chest, head, jaw, neck, face, eyes, shoulders, or lower back. Having discovered where we're still holding tension, tightness, or emotion, we proceed with eyes closed, to relax every muscle in our body and just feel the tension and tightness, without thinking, until they dissolve or almost completely dissolve, usually within minutes. This is known as Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine): when stress, emotion or physical areas of tightness or tension are fully felt, the muscles and tissues in those areas begin to relax and the feelings/ stress/ constrictions flow out of the body. We are desensitizing  ourselves to strong emotions and somatic tensions through prolonged exposure.​

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Psychosomatic Psychotherapy integrates mind and body, metabolizes deep emotional material and trauma, and breaks up stress and tension locked in the body thus lowering inflammation, and diminishing or eliminating physical and mental symptoms and conditions. This therapy is both therapeutic and preventive: we can both treat symptoms and illnesses and prevent or diminish their occurrence. When finished, we have thoroughly processed the story, thoughts, emotions, and body tensions related to what's been bothering us and this brings considerable relief! 

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Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is an important part of this treatment as changing thoughts can sometimes improve how we feel. Other clinical influences on Psychosomatic Psychotherapy include Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Interpersonal Therapy, Short-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, and Buddhism. Treatment populations include individuals, adolescents, couples, and families.

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This approach is bi-directional: sometimes we start with our story and work our way down and sometimes we start with the body and emotions and work our way up. Indeed, some issues fully metabolized in the body need no further mental processing!

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