Betrayal of the Body (Alexander Lowen, MD)

In his long experience in helping troubled persons and searching out the roots of their emotional problems, psychoanalyst Alexander Lowen has found that many people have actually denied the reality, needs and feelings of their own bodies. In The Betrayal of the Body, he describes and illustrates through dramatic case histories why these problems arise, how to face them, and how to achieve emotional fulfillment through the recovery of a gratifying mind-body relationship. Among the subjects covered in this encouraging book: the body's hunger for pleasure-and why people deny it, the body's capacity for joy, why people cannot love themselves or others-or be loved, the hidden causes of compulsive eating, the fears behind insomnia, sex with-and without-feeling, why children become "schizzy", the behavior of the demonic mother, prenatal rejection of the child, the "monster," "clown" and "doll" adjustments to reality, the direct relation between breathing and feelings of bodily pleasure, restoring the capacity for pleasure through special exercises, and the rewards of accepting the body.