CORE ENERGETICS

Core Energetics was created by John Pierrakos. In the nineteenforties, Pierrakos trained in New York as a psychiatrist and studied with Wilhelm Reich. With another of Reich's students, Alexander Lowen, he developed Bio-Energetics using Reich's concepts of energy and ‘character defenses'*. In 1964, he met Eva Broch, leader of the Pathwork. Under her influence, Pierrakos created Core Energetics, shifting his emphasis away from the analysis of the defenses, to the cultivation of the creative and the spiritual self (the core). This shift is also the main difference between Core and many psychological perspectives on personal growth: psychology focuses on the diseased parts of the self. In Core Energetics, the therapist relates to the client's healthy core, not to his pathology... As children, we all made trade-offs. We hid or repressed certain feelings - like hatred or love, anger or spite - because we felt these would get us into trouble: we felt that we would not get the love, care or..