ie, are there terms to describe psychotherapies that require physical action alongside the cognitive action (somatic experiencing, EMDR, PSTEC, progressive muscle relaxation, exercise therapy, massage therapy, etc) vs therapies that are purely cognitive (CBT, gestalt, visualization, mindfulness, hypnotherapy, etc)?
Is this even a recognized division between somatic and cognitive psychotherapies?
Well, the word ‘behavioral’ is probably what you’re looking for, but ‘massage therapy’, for example, isn’t a psychotherapy at all. Even a ‘purely cognitive’ approach will have some behavioral crossover, since encouraging exercise for depressed people, or systematic exposure for anxious people, for examples, isn’t something a cognitive therapist would avoid.
Sexual surrogate therapy also requires a physical input… :dubious:
I have been in therapy for awhile but it was never ideological in the sense that I can’t say what method my therapists preferred except that none were psychodynamic. But my understanding is that CBT requires physical action, i.e. “homework,” no?
I don’t know if the question has an answer, but some (not saying all as I don’t know them all) of the therapies in the first group seem closer to “woo.”
The woo ones are the only ones that are working on me. I asked the question because our brains are 500 million years old and were designed to control our bodies. Our advanced psychologies capable of reflection independent of our bodies came late in our evolution.
So I am wondering if there is a school of thought that implies that our brains need some kind of physical input (sight, sound, feel, taste, touch, etc) combined with therapy to work well.