Peter Geissler

This article deals with the psychotherapist Peter Geißler. For other people see Peter Geissler .

Peter Geißler (born December 7, 1953 in Vienna ) is an Austrian body psychotherapist , psychoanalytic psychotherapist and co-founder of analytical body psychotherapy.

life and work

After studying medicine and psychology at the University of Vienna, he was initially trained in bioenergetic analysis and was a training analyst for the German and Austrian Society for Bioenergetic Analysis. Since 1981 he has been practicing as a body psychotherapist in private practice in Vienna and Neu-Oberhausen.

In his writings from 1994 onwards, he criticized what he believed to be a poor theoretical foundation for bioenergetic analysis and was increasingly oriented towards psychoanalytic research. Together with like-minded colleagues, he founded the working group for analytical body-related psychotherapy (AKP) in Austria with the aim of drafting an integration of body-related approaches in the context of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

In the early 1990s, this developed into analytical body psychotherapy, on which he has now published a number of publications. Companions in the development of this new methodical approach were Tilmann Moser , Jacques Berliner, Günter Heisterkamp and Gisela Worm. Since 1998 he has organized the Vienna symposium "Psychoanalysis and the Body" every two years, and since 2002 he has been the editor of the journal of the same name.

Analytical body psychotherapy is a special form of psychoanalytic psychotherapy . The dialogue between patient and therapist is supplemented and deepened by action samples against the background of a setting that is open to body-related interventions. Whereas in classical psychoanalytic understanding action dialogues are seen exclusively as unconsciously conveyed relational messages, analytical body psychotherapy makes use of a more comprehensive definition in which unconscious and conscious action aspects flow equally by explaining the effectiveness of action dialogues both in terms of their concrete and symbolic meaning for the patient.

For the technique of analytical body psychotherapy, this means that both unconscious dialogues of action (enactments) and consciously used dialogues of action (scenic interventions) are used. The action dialogue, which is broadly defined in this way, remains about 90% determined by unconscious components. The place of the actual effect of psychotherapy is seen in the shared, implicit-emotional-physical knowledge and its gradual change in the therapeutic process .

Works

• Psychoanalysis and Bioenergetic Analysis. In the field of tension between demarcation and integration. 1994, ISBN 3-631-49242-1 .
• New developments in bioenergetic analysis. Materials on analytical body-related psychotherapy. 1996, ISBN 3-631-49521-8 .
• Analytical body psychotherapy. Bioenergetic and psychoanalytic basics and current trends. 1997, ISBN 3-85076-416-8 .
• Analytical body psychotherapy in practice. 1998, ISBN 3-7904-0667-8 .
• Psychoanalysis and the body. 2001, ISBN 3-89806-063-2 .
• Myth of regression. Psychosocial. 2001, ISBN 3-89806-126-4 .
• Finding sexuality through the body. 2001, ISBN 3-89806-064-0 .
• Body images. 2003, ISBN 3-89806-276-7 .
• What is self-regulation? A position assessment. 2004, ISBN 3-89806-318-6 .
• Nonverbal interaction in psychotherapy. Research and relevance in the therapeutic process. 2005, ISBN 3-89806-350-X .
• with Günter Heisterkamp: Psychoanalysis of life movements. On the physical occurrence in psychoanalytic therapy. A textbook. 2007, ISBN 978-3-211-48608-5 .
• The body in interaction. Acting as a source of knowledge in psychoanalytic therapy. 2008, ISBN 978-3-89806-799-7 .
• Analytical body psychotherapy: taking stock. 2009, ISBN 978-3-89806-879-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Peter Geißler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Peter Geißler's website