Robert Sapolsky

A recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award, Robert Sapolsky is a noted researcher and lecturer in the diverse fields of animal (particularly primate) behavior and human neurobiology. Over the years, he has split time between the forests of Equatorial Africa and the laboratories of Stanford University. Sapolsky combined research he has conducted in these diverse fields when writing best-selling books on stress and human society.

Wilfred Bion

Best known for his theories of small group behavior, Wilfred Bion applied his understanding of the psychodynamic nature of anxiety to the treatment of patients in England. He worked out of the Tavistock Clinic in London and was oriented to the object-relations school of psychoanalysis. Bion was particularly impacted by his own experience as a British officer during World War I and as a therapist working with the psychiatric causalities of World War II.

Now on to the diagnosis of the Tin Man (and current day tin men and women).

The Nature of Energy

Our diagnosis focuses on the encasement of the Tin Man in armor and the resulting blocking of any movement. While contemporary men and women may not be encased in physical armor, they can be “encased” in a set of psychological conditions that block the flow of that energy that is required for physical movement to taken place.

Both Reich and Feldenkrais focus on Energy – but not the hydraulic energy imagined by Freud. He was pre-electronic (hydrology was big during his years. It concerns the flow of viscous substances). What did energy mean for Reich and Feldenkrais? We must identify the options and ways that energy is identified and used in the world. Before doing so, I provide an opening gambit offered by Feldenkrais in his introduction to The Potent Self (2002, p. xli). In this statement, Feldenkrais sets the stage for consideration of differing perspectives on the source of psychic energy and different ways in which this energy is engaged:

Ideas, good or bad, get hold of us if they fit into the general background of the picture we make to ourselves of the world. Modem psychology began to flourish at a time when the thermos-dynamics theory of heat and the theory of potential were final] put on a firm basis and clearly formulated by some of the most eminent scientists of that time. Thus, the idea that energy can neither be created nor destroyed became more or less common knowledge. Any educated person knew this, and it was quite natural to formulate the libido theory on the same lines, that is, to be analogous with the energy theory. Emotional energy could accumulate, be dammed up; and, as it could not be destroyed, either steam had to be let off or sublimation had to take place. The same background prevails today and some excellent authors, who now see quite clearly the fallacy in the libido analogy, inadvertently make the same mistake with other emotional manifestations-such as aggression.

With this summary statement, Feldenkrais has set the stage for an exploration of the diverse ways in which energy has been conceived. Feldenkrais is correct in noting that energy became a favorite topic with the early 20th Century focus on thermo-dynamic energy. However, energy was traditionally identified in Western Societies as the movement of bodily fluids or bodily parts around the human body. Energy is identified as Chi. There is a general sense in most Asian societies that the natural world is a dynamic self-sustaining and self-organizing world.