This Congress focuses on Body Psychotherapy in its current richness, bringing together professionals from many European countries, Latin America and the United States. It covers theory, clinical practice, the embeddedness of our work in society as well as the cultural diversity of the movement.

We start with an overview on the State of the Art of our profession, exploring its basic assumptions and general intervention principles. Following this we will situate our modality among the mainstreams of Psychotherapy: Psychodynamics, CBT, Humanistic and Systemic, covering what is common and what is specific to Body Psychotherapy. Representatives of two of these mainstreams will present their views.

The second day begins with a talk on an epigenetic perspective on psychotherapy: How far are we determined by genetics, how is its expression changed by traumatic or healing experiences? How are acquired behaviors incorporated into newly transmitted information? What is the place of psychotherapy in reverting epigenetic marks and affecting neurobiological mechanisms?
We will then continue with a clinical issue: How do body psychotherapists intervene with anxiety and panic disorders? Professionals from different approaches within Body Psychotherapy present their work, looking for an exchange and possible unification of concepts.

Presentations and workshops with an experiential character are a main feature on Friday afternoon and Saturday. Parallel to smaller talks and experiential workshops, three main subjects will be discussed in an amphitheater space on Saturday:  The Science and Research Symposium, organized by the EABP Science and Research committee; a reflection on gender issues and embodiment as well as aspects of representation of the female in the field of psychotherapy, presented by a group of German female colleagues; and onstage supervision, where we have a critical look on how supervision is handled in our profession.

On Sunday we will have a wider look on the societies we live in, its structures and tendencies, how and to what extent they determine the clinical issues we treat in our every day clinical work. Are we only at the receiving end of a neurotic society, or can we psychotherapy professionals influence the direction in which that society is going? More specifically we will look at trauma at the scale of societies in three continents and experiences with different therapeutic interventions.

We offer home groups in different languages, and if this is your first contact with Body Psychotherapy or if you are the first time at a big congress, you may want to raise your concerns or share your experience in a language you feel easy in.

This 14th Congress of the European Association for Body Psychotherapy (EABP), organized together with the International Scientific Committee of Body Psychotherapy , brings to Portugal prominent professionals of this field. We welcome you to this exchange and to a celebration of the many methodological approaches and cultural stances in the understanding of human beings that Body Psychotherapy represents.