Talk:Somatic psychology

message: A very relevant website, featuring monthly conversations with a variety of body-oriented psychotherapists. Published by USABP. I am not adding it directly because of COI. See http://www.SomaticPerspectives.com
Wikizeno (talk) 16:03, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done--Ziji  (talk email) 23:24, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Somatic Perspectives on Psychotherapy 

message: This article is being used as an advertising vehicle, which is not the intention of an encyclopedic resource such as WP. 
I have started removing statements that make any type of claim that is not backed up by a reliable source.MatthewTStone (talk) 23:46, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Use of Wikipedia as an advertising medium

message: The two articles present the two terms as synonymous. I see this is contested above. However, either:
* they are synonymous, in which case they should be merged; or
* they are not synonymous, in which case the distinction should be clarified.
IMHO. /skagedaltalk 20:57, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Correct and they are not synonymous but the language in both articles that defines each subject is hopelessly confused. Literally, somatic psychology means the study of the mind in the body, whereas body psychotherapy means therapy of the mind in the body. Can we start from the premise that Somatic psychology is the title of the book and body psychotherapy a chapter on a specific practice within somatic psychology? The latter can include many chapters, as I have suggested above, the psychology of body in dance, art and music; pre- and perinatal experience of body; mirror neurons, embodiment, etc. But body psychotherapy can only include any of them within the practice of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is a more limited field than psychology and is a subset of it. To clarify this, consider under which title Somatherapy would best fit. Is it a subset of somatic psychology or a subset of body psychotherapy? Somatherapy is, simply put, an anarchist body psychotherapy but it is using emotion, body and group work in a political framework. I think that makes it broader than a body psychotherapy and makes it into a subset of somatic psychology (the parent) not of body psychotherapy (a cousin or sibling perhaps). It's been a while since I've worked on these articles so I will spend a bit of time here having nearly got C-PTSD up to scratch.--Ziji  (talk email) 21:29, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: I have been bothered by the critique section this article for some time.  There are plenty of valid criticisms that could be made about Somatic Psychology (i.e. the fact that Reich, Archer and Boadella's theories are not founded on clinical research, or that the field has long been associated with New Age and alternative medicine) but the arguments presented here are incoherent and erroneous.  Specifically:
- The first statement with ref. to Stenger calls into question whether psychotherapy is evidenced-based medicine or not.  Since this criticism applies to all psychotherapy, it is not specific to somatic psychology and does not really belong here.
- The second statement, that the concept of the body is socially constructed, is quite relevant, and for precisely this reason has been engaged with extensively by recent theory in this field.  Older Somatic Psychology was both ethno- and heterocentric, and more recent writers have gone to great lengths to both acknowledge and rectify this (c.f. Nick Totton's work and the anthology The Body in Psychotherapy).
- The third statement contains the phrase 'are well argued as a form of neurotheology.'  The qualifier 'well argued' is an evaluation and violates NPOV, especially since no reference is given.
- The fourth statement starts out relevant - it's true that Reich's legacy represents a significant piece of baggage for Somatic Psychology.  However, the argument then veers off into territory that has nothing to do with the subject at hand; Freud's interest in cocaine and his relationship with Fliess have nothing to do with Reich, and their inclusion evidences fallacious reasoning on the part of the author.  One might more appropriately discuss the fact that Reich thought he could control the weather and had contacted UFOs.
- The final statement, that the history of medicine shows ancient precedents to Somatic Psychology, is not a critique.  Somatic Psychologists do not claim that they have developed something totally new and without precedent, so this is erroneous.
In the interest of maintaining quality standards, these criticisms out to be replaced with more topical and coherent ones.  Since I am a student of Somatic Psychology, however, I am not sure I am the right person to make these edits.  Soft helion (talk) 05:33, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems with Critique Section 

message: Hi - I'm interested in working with other editors to generally improve the body of this article and its partner, body psychotherapy (thanks for all the discussion that sets up a meaningful distinction between the two!). The lead of this article seems solid enough but the body text is semi-random and the body psychotherapy page is even worse. 
There is a Norton textbook released 2012 on body psychotherapy Body-Psychotherapy that I'm hoping will provide a more systematic ground - but I have a question as I do get a little confused about the primary-secondary source distinction in an emerging and specialist field, so would appreciate discussion about it. 
My thought is the guiding principle is NPOV, independence, reliability, credibility - thus as a field develops its own peer reviewed and scholarly published journals and gains wider academic engagement, then in my thinking these sources gain reliability - but then as someone commented, to protect against self-promotion/advertising wikipedia should not report 'what body psychotherapists say about themselves but what others say about body psychotherapists' - except that then you get into a kind of absurd corner where only non-specialists can report on specialist topics therefore reducing reliability and accuracy. Maybe I'm missing something! I know this issue is discussed widely across Wikipedia, so it's an ongoing discussion maybe case by case? anyway appreciate input and collaboration Depthdiver (talk) 18:13, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  General improvement effort