Emotional flooding

Tribal communities often have a shaman, or a medicine man, whose primary responsibilities include diagnosing illnesses, prescribing herbs and suggesting other treatments to cure the afflicted of their ailments. Many ritual cures include free displays of emotion. In his book, The Discovery of the Unconscious, Henri Ellenberger claims that shamans historically were primarily practitioners of psychosomatic medicine. These shamans did not consider the possibility of a split between mind and body, unlike the popular beliefs of the Western philosophical movement. According to some researchers, many tribal afflictions were more likely symptoms of disorders such as depression or schizophrenia. Similar to the treatments for these disorders practiced today, historically the treatments shamans practiced often required the patient to recall difficult experiences and to recreate a wide range of emotional accounts. ==Early Renaissance==

Doctors from the Renaissance period also practiced treatments that resembled emotional flooding for patients afflicted with demonic possession. Paul Olsen says, "Possession was truly a diagnostic category of its day, encompassing practically any form of religi-culturally determined psychopathology.” Practitioners frequently attributed many ailments, as well as most odd behaviors, now recognized as mental diseases to Satan and other demons. This was particularly true when the ravings, actions, or hallucinatory experiences could be considered blasphemous or heretical. Cures for possession by the devil focused on spiritual salvation and were aimed at getting to a person's unconscious and unacceptable impulses and wishes. Many people who confessed under the duress of torture may well have been releasing repressed material. In all likelihood, pain stimulated a flood of unconscious crimes, such as murderous rage against authority figures, incest wishes, or any number of socially determined offenses. Exorcism rituals aimed at rescuing the soul from Satan. The effects of the procedure may have also relieved some of the body's anguish through release of emotional pain. These techniques resembled modern emotional flooding techniques. The emphasis on emotion was strong in exorcism techniques; the exorcist tried to temper its expression or to liberate it. ==Nineteenth century==

Pierre Janet and hypnosis Pierre Janet was a French hypnotist who used hypnosis to study the dissociative tendencies of the mind. Researcher John Ryan Haule studied Janet's work and observed that Janet referred to the hypnotic process as 'influence somnambulique.' Before 1900, Janet saw somnambulism as the essential condition, of which hysteria, hypnosis, multiple personality, and spiritualism were variations. Janet used the word somnambulism to refer to any kind of activity pursued while in a dissociated condition, not just to sleepwalking. Later, Sigmund Freud and his followers deemed the cathartic cure to be unsuccessful because it did not stimulate awareness of unconscious factors and did not result in insight, which meant that there may be symptom substitution which could lead to no real cure. W. Edward Mann called attention to the body's visible displays of character armor such as muscular tension and stated that armoring was the character structure in its physical form. He explained that if one could break down the armoring one would be able to change the neurotic character structure. Researchers now understand these displays as physical defenses; the body reacts in certain ways to defend the person against the expression of undesirable emotion. Mann explains the build-up of armoring as the body's physical response to create blocks for natural biological movements such as curiosity, play, sex, exploration, or defiance of authority. Reich's writings imply that there are no benefits in armoring, a belief that most modern-day experts do not accept. Essentially, the technique meant that to properly treat the problem, the therapist must break down the body's defenses to allow repressed emotion to come out. ==Contemporary practice==

Modern uses of emotional flooding include: • Gestalt Therapy, developed by Frederick S. Perls • Immersion Therapy • Sensory Hypnoanalysis, used by Milton Kline ==Citations==