What is "autogenic training"

n. training patients in self-induced relaxation [syn: autogenic therapy, autogenics]

Autogenic training is a desensitation- relaxation technique developed by the German psychiatrist Johannes Heinrich Schultz and first published in 1932. The technique involves the daily practice of sessions that last around 15 minutes. During each session, the practitioner repeats a set of visualisations that induce a state of relaxation. Each session can be practiced in a position chosen amongst a set of recommended postures (for example, lying down, sitting meditation, sitting like a rag doll). The technique can be used to alleviate many stress-induced psychosomatic disorders.

Autogenic training was popularized in North America and the English-speaking world by Wolfgang Luthe, who co-authored, with Schultz, a multi-volume tome on autogenic training. In 1963 Luthe discovered the significance of "autogenic discharges", paroxysmic phenomena of motor, sensorial, visual and emotional nature related to the traumatic history of the patient, and developed the method of "autogenic abreaction". His disciple Luis de Rivera, a McGill University-trained psychiatrist, introduced psychodynamic concepts into Luthe's approach, developing "autogenic analysis" as a new method for uncovering the unconscious.

There are many parallels between autogenic training and progressive relaxation. Herbert Benson, MD, a Harvard professor, also did significant research in the area and wrote an influential book, The Relaxation Response.

Abbé Faria and Émile Coué are the forerunners of Schultz.

Like many techniques ( progressive relaxation, yoga, qigong, varieties of meditation) which have been developed into advanced, sophisticated processes of intervention and learning, autogenic training, as Luthe and Schultz wrote in their master tome, took well over a year to learn to teach and over a year to learn. But some biofeedback practitioners took the most basic elements of autogenic imagery and developed "condensed" simplified versions that were used in combination with biofeedback. This was done at the Menninger Foundation by Elmer Green, Steve Fahrio, Patricia Norris, Joe Sargent, Dale Walters and others, where they took the hand warming imagery of autogenic training and used it as an aid to develop thermal biofeedback.