home history approach aspects courses sessions facilitator contact Links History Development John Pierrakos who worked as a psychiatrist in the 1940s with Reich has developed Core Energetics. Its roots come from the work of Freud and Reich. As an associate of Freud, Reich chose to focus his work not only on the mind but also on the body. Just as repressed psychic material was believed by Freud to be held within the unconscious Reich believed that repressed emotions were held as energetic blockages within the body. These energetic blockages he saw as chronic muscular tension or armoring. Reich saw that an individual's body is expressed psychologically and physically in identical terms. Psychological defenses are thus manifest in the physical structure of the body. This psychosomatic identity is the basis for most somatic psychotherapies. Alexander Lowen also worked with Reich and Pierrakos and, in the 1950s Lowen and Pierrakos co-found Bioenergetics Therapy. They developed further the `study of the personality in terms of the body'. The use of direct contact with the patient's body to release muscular tensions was introduced and basic positions and exercises were developed, now standard in Bioenergetics and Core Energetics. In the 1970s John Pierrakos separated from the Bioenergetics School as he felt that it lacked a philosophy, which included the spiritual nature of human beings. Core Energetic approach was born by the synthesis of John's understandings and research of human nature and Eva Pierrakos' 'Pathwork' material of spiritual development.