Gerda Boyesen was born in 1922 to a traditional family in the most puritan region of Norway, Bergen.

Wilhelm Reich arrived in Norway before the war, in 1934, to escape from the Nazis. He was then developing his theories and studies on orgone. During this period, he mentored several character-analysts, of which Ola Raknes stood out. Later, Raknes would be the one to introduce Gerda to Vegetotherapy.

In that particular cultural environment, there were few who could assimilate the cutting-edge creativity of Reich’s ideas. In 1939, he was tried by the Norwegian Parliament and exiled because of his intention to measure sexual energy between men and women at the psychiatric hospitals while they had sexual intercourse.

In 1947, two years after the war, Gerda was a housewife, mother of two daughters, Ebbah and Mona Lisa. She felt torn between reproducing the castrating authoritative education she had experienced and the strong feelings of love and compassion she felt for her daughters.

Upon reading the book 'Neuroses and the Neurotic Character' by H. Schelderup, Gerda discovered psychoanalysis and vegetotherapy and became aware of her own neuroses. This motivated her to seek therapeutic help, and to begin studies in psychology at the University of Oslo, awakening to the cause of the protection of emotional life.

In the same year, Gerda became fascinated by a lecture given by Ola Raknes on 'The German Character' in which he questions, with courage and simplicity, the authoritarian characteristic of the classic education currently in power.

When responding to a criticism made during this conference, Gerda - outraged - asks to speak:

'You have destroyed children across all these centuries. You have bent them instead of helping them develop as free individuals. That is why there is so much social pathology. It’s as if you had a plant and placed a rock where it needed to grow. It grows twisted and turned.'

A few days later, she started therapy and vegetotheraphy training with Ola Raknes.

Afterwards, Gerda graduated in physical therapy and, with this degree, worked in the Bulow-Hansen Institute. There, Gerda says she had the opportunity to witness the cure of people with neuroses through the single medium of massage (a technique called 'Impulse and Shock'). Through her thinking, Gerda synthesized these experiences with her knowledge of psychology and vegetotherapy. This was a time of many theoretical-practical insights and aspirations that served as the base for a new type of therapy Gerda would develop : Biodynamics.

What best defines Gerda Boyesen’s contribution through Biodynamics is the fundamental importance given to vegetative release (which is the 'great secret' she discovers when diving into the space between the psyche and the somatic) and to the therapist’s attitude; what she called the 'Midwife’s Method':

'The therapist must simply offer total understanding and love so that an interior stimulus can completely develop and transform the patient’s being. Massage is the real road that enables the therapist to find love within him/herself. It is impossible to give massage without love.'

Gerda gives equal technical importance to the voice tone and quality of touch, and is able to reach different levels through those two means: the deep being, or endoderm, the emotional being, or mesoderm, and the intellectual being, or ectoderm. Thus, the client’s process is 'opened'. Another mark of Gerda’s is the use of a stethoscope resting on the patient’s belly, allowing the therapist to have intimate contact with visceral tension and thus enabling the stimulation of peristaltic response and the elimination of stress products through massage or any other somatic technique. In 1970, Gerda settled in London where she founded the Acacia House Biodynamics Therapy Center. To this day, at 74, she still lectures with her characteristic brilliance.

Two other centers of Biodynamics exist in Europe today: one in France, under the direction of Paul Boyesen, Gerda’s third son, and the other in Ireland, under the direction of Patrick Sell, who lived in Brazil from 1986 - 1989 and introduced Biodynamics to many of us.

Gerda Boyesen’s work is today internationally recognized as part of the field of corporal psychotherapies.

In addition to several articles in the 'Journal of Biodynamic Psychology' Gerda is the author of the books: 'Entre Psyche et Soma - Introduction à la Psychologie Biodynamique', 'Biodynamik Des Lebens', and 'Vonder Lust am Meiken'.

November, 1996

The Author:
Publisher of 'Artes de Cura'. Massagist.
Biodynamic Therapist and Neuromuscular Therapist.