Focus by Bernard Sensfelder, on February 1st 2017
Translated by Mylène Mathieu
In the interview “Einophony : when Pneumaphony meets hypnosis”, Bernard Sensfelder mentioned his practice of Einotherapy in the footsteps of François Roustang’s Ecotherapy. He develops below his approach and explains why he chose to name it Einotherapy.
In Roustang’s view, one has to forget oneself in order to be transformed by the environment, hence the use of “eco”. I went deeper into that concept and focused a bit more on the self. There is no contradiction with Roustang’s work, I only distinguished further between the person who we fundamentally are, and the character that is slowly built over and in the end conceals the person, the self.
I think that, for a therapy to take place, the self has to emerge, come to the surface, and be back in motion. Among others, it allows people to become aware of how to use the character as a tool for social integration. It is not about rejecting the idea of the character as if it were bad. Rather, it is about breaking through and going further than this character as a product of reacting to fear or gilt (or both), so that only the person remains, acting according to their environment.
I think that the aim of a therapy is people’s fulfillment, along with consciously and willingly creating a sort of character. Of course, that character has to meet the social and cultural requirements of the environment in which the person is, and it dissolves in what I call “the roles”.
Through therapy, we go from a character suffocating the person, to a Self blossoming through different roles. Roustang stood up for the idea that suffering comes from a stop or some clumsiness in the motion of Life, his idea was that people are not ill but clumsy. Roustang’s aim was to have the people back in their own right motion, not by doing that themselves, rather by letting the environment influence, affect and change them. On the opposite, the character fights against the environment, and tries to separate from it. So that process implies a free emergence of the person.
What I am developing is thus in the footsteps of Roustang, but the word Ecotherapy does not fit for two reasons: first because it doesn’t mention the center, which is the person. And second, because the word Ecotherapy actually refers to two practices: the one developed by Roustang and another totally different one consisting of finding yourself through contact with nature and plants. Einotherapy sounds more adequate to me. The approach of Einophony is similar, with the vocal aspect bringing in its great power.
