The role and value of pleasure in dance/movement therapy experience: beyond the limits of science

Abstract

The human experience of pleasure as a feeling is surprisingly evasive and poorly understood. While mental health practitioners often focus on symptoms of psychological disorders such as depression, compulsion, lack of meaning/purpose (emptiness), phobias and fears, and adverse physiological functioning of sleeping, eating, elimination and sexual activity/experience, the fundamental complaint of clients and patients is an inability to enjoy their lives with a sense of well-being. This article will attempt to show that enjoyment, well-being, and the experience of pleasure however are not determined either by cognitive activity (state of mind), nor by physiological factors of nutrition, fitness, or dietary supplements. Rather, pleasure and fear are best understood energetically. As Wilhelm Reich pointed out nearly 100 years ago, and as incorporated in the somatic psychotherapy of Bioenergetics, and dance/movement therapy (DMT), fear produces contraction while pleasure produces expansion, psychically and physically. It is a simple intuitive fact with broad and deep implications yet is unaccepted in academic psychology.