Alexander Lowen

Dr. Alexander Lowen, a student of Wilhelm Reich's in the 1940s and early 1950s in New York, developed the mind-body psychotherapy known as bioenergetic analysis with his then colleague John Pierrakos. He is the founder and former executive director of the International Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis in New York City.

Dr. Lowen received a bachelor's degree in science and business from City College of New York and continued on to receive an LLB from Brooklyn Law School. His interest in the link between the mind and the body developed during this time, and he ultimately enrolled in a class on character analysis with Wilhelm Reich. After training to be a therapist himself, Lowen moved to Switzerland to attend the University of Geneva, which awarded him an M.D. in June, 1951.

Dr. Lowen currently lives and practices in New Canaan, Connecticut.

During his career, Dr. Lowen published fourteen books, including The Language of the Body in 1958, followed by Love and Orgasm (1965), The Betrayal of the Body,(1967) Pleasure (1970), Bioenergetics (1976), Depression and the Body (1977), Fear of Life (1980), Narcissism (1984), Love, Sex and Your Heart (1988), The Spirituality of the Body (1990), Joy (1995), Honoring the Body (2004), and The Voice of the Body (2005). With his wife Leslie he wrote The Way to Vibrant Health: A Manual of Bioenergetic Exercises in 1977. Although a number of his books had gone out of print, they are all now being republished by Bioenergetics Press in association with The Florida Society for Bioenergetic Analysis. Lowen published his autobiography Honoring the Body: The Autobiography of Alexander Lowen, M.D. at age 93.

Related Issues

 * Esalen Institute

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