Palmer, Freud and the Postural Unconscious

Chiropractic Psychosomatics and the Expressive Posture

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Mark S. Chiacchi, DC

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Past-President, American Chiropractic Association's 

Councils on Mental and Behavioral Health

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Reprinted from... Dynamic Chiropractic Magazine... July 2008, Vol. 26, Issue 16.

It should come as no surprise to any doctor of chiropractic in active practice for any amount of time... and one who regularly sees patients that are often plagued by what may be described as subclinical antalgic postures... that active and  chronic mind/body pain, stress and anxiety often accompany odd and indefinable 'expressive postures' in association with geographic and positional...  losses of homeostatic equilibrium.

Over time, these become easily recognizable as precursors to acute episodes of subluxation activity that often lead to, or result from, somatic anxieties and their often indefinable and always self-perpetuating psychosomatic events. These repetitive and unconscious activities of mind and body will often resonant with Palmer's metaphysical innate and Freud's metapsychological ego... through an energy postulate that might well be thought of as the... postural unconscious.

We begin our discussion with the definition of the postural unconscious as an energetic neurostructural activity based on an innate predisposition of selected somatic structures.  These structures are able to assume very postural patterns of internalized contractures in response to the level of ego threatening, free-floating, emotional stresses within the patient.  When these emotional stresses reach a level of heightened proportion that can no longer be psychically tolerated, they will 'spill' over into/onto the physical side in the form of myofascial contractions that are repetitive and remain largely unchanged over the years.  They eventually become tied to the formulation of chronic somatic anxieties, both real and imagined, often resulting in chronic mind/body tension/psychodynamic headaches (1).

This is a form of postural patterning; a learned behavior by which the organism has become dependent upon at times when the need for discharging stressful energies is required by an overwhelmed psyche, unable to cope.  This release of excess tension throughout the nervous system, and its surrounding infrastructure, sets the stage for the resorption of this energy by selected postures.  The resulting structural pattern these postures assume is in many cases predictable, and accurate, each and every time (2).  This process is the manner of energetic communication from the unconscious innate mind... to the conscious ego that demonstrates a threshold of activity at the boundary between mind and body that regulates emotional discharge.  In such a scenario, what cannot or should not be verbally expressed is suppressed.  What cannot be acted upon is then often displayed through the expressions of postural dyskinesias and subluxations.

These are learned behaviors whereby the organism retreats from unpleasant situations through a long-axis contraction that draws it back from the negative stimulus, avoiding conflict and turning rage inward upon the self.  These 'expressive postures' are modeled after what are often called state-dependent frames of mind.  These are mindsets that often occur unconsciously when repressed emotions rise dangerously close to the level of preconscious activity; so close that an abrupt means of escape from cognition is necessary and expedited through chronic or latent vertebral subluxation sites.  This energy will then disseminate through postural adaptations or expressions that relieve localized physical energetic distress as well as provide a timely avoidance for the pain, stress and anxiety of an uncensored self-awareness.

In recognizing this activity of the postural unconscious and the expressive posture it faithfully exhibits to the doctor of chiropractic... who will eventually attempt to lower subtle unconscious psychosomatic resistance by releasing any neurostructural inhibitions... the true nature of the patient's issue.  These inhibitions take the form of subluxations that interfere with communication pathways between the mind and body, leading to new, but incorrect neurolearnings.

Further on, one might look to the postural unconscious as the beginning of a 'psychical subluxation' whereby unconscious reflexes within the patient might provoke a particular myofascial pattern to appear.  Over time, this will direct pain, stress and anxiety toward specifically targeted areas, creating a loss of neuromusculoskeletal tone and chronic subluxation.  This will appear to be physical in nature, but may indeed be emotional, resulting from a cyclical neuronal loop that is self-perpetuating, thanks to an excess quantity of dispersible nervous system energy to the subluxation site, which again may result in chronic tension/psychodynamic headaches (3).

This might explain the repetitive visits by patients during times of difficulty when dealing with death, divorce, or career distresses.  Patients usually do not equate the chronic nature of their unconscious subluxation patterns to everyday events, as they rarely connect their chiropractic care with any particular or simultaneous lifetime trials that may influence their posture as well as their mental health.

If the energetic charge or investment in the pain, stress or anxiety is strong enough to overcome internal or innate resistances, a somatic display of postural contracture will occur.  When this takes place, associated groups of myofascial tissues will engage in a patterned response in the active, but variable, internalized stresses that will create remarkable geographic spasm at the body's surface that are not only specific to its area, but also specific to the particular source of the anxiety provoking it.

So, in our examination of the patterned subluxation response, we might want to look at factors associated with the postural unconscious that might repress awareness.  This often takes place in the case of the occasional, uncommitted patient who will only appear for care after weeks or months of mental pain, stress and anxiety.  These patients in particular, tend to exhibit emotional distress throughout their neuromusculoskeletal frame.  When their infrastructure is sufficiently insulted... toxic myospasms occur... and structural distortions will follow in the form of long term, unrelenting, subluxation syndromes that often mystify both patient and doctor.

Such patients strongly deny any emotional conflicts in relation to the myofascial postural duress they are experiencing.  However, these same patients often state that they had a 'sense' or 'feeling' that they 'knew' this would happen, as it usually did when stressful situations arose.  This reflects on what could be called an episodic somatic anxiety... a reaction that seems far removed from an event, but in reality is already... simply at its end stage.

The doctor must make the patient consciously aware of the fact that the problem of postural distress is an unconscious reaction to an unknown stress (4).  Also, as the problem is not yet understood by the patient, they must work with the doctor in recognizing the recurrent nature and timing of the subluxation and its effects.  This work should continue until the repressed energies associated with the resistance are recognized and depleted by gradual reduction of symptomatic and non symptomatic subluxation sites, improving psychosomatic energy redistribution.

This is an energetic balance between what the mind produces and what the body can use in  it's homeostatic equilibrium.  This is a vital point, as there is no naturally occurring window for the escape of any excess mental energy.  Such energy, importantly enough, might result in the aberrancy of neurotic thoughts and subluxation postures.  In seeing this situation for what it is, the doctor of chiropractic must work to understand the systematized pattern of events that often brings the unconscious to this point in time.  Any chiropractic care at this stage is focused upon the postural stress of the subluxation and the mind/body's reactive distress as seen in its anxious and repetitive neurotic behaviors.

If, as we may suspect, the patient has a definative inkling as to the sequence and consequence of these events, we must still attempt to educate their conciseness into accepting the fact that latent unconscious fears and anxieties eventually may find their way to the fragile threshold of tolerance that separates anxiety based repressed memories and traumas from the more acceptable 'reframed recollections' of a neural nature.  Memories and traumas that do eventually reframe themselves into less threatening mental images often seem to disappear into unconscious oblivion, no longer factors in discordant energy distribution.

Anxiety factors that do not disappear often fuel hyper-excitable mental impulses through myofascial spasms and subluxations that offer an active and convenient kinetic vehicle for the displacement of ego threatening thoughts into somatic discomforts.  This is often seen in angry or sick postures that reveal an active internal conflict that has turned to the somatic side (5).  The idea that spasm and subluxation play an active role in the reduction of both internal and external threats to the psyche is a paradox of sorts, as the variable environment in which the central nervous system works to cope, and survive in. often finds itself as the reluctant foundation for such neurotic behaviors.

The fact that subluxation activity is either the cause or the result of such psychosomatic events is relative only to the resolution of the unconscious postures within which the subluxation is found. This subluxation might be secondary to an ego event that the mind/body is prone to repeat when the same set of circumstances are encountered by the patient.  If, on the other hand, the subluxation is first upon the scene and is given the ultimate ingredient of time... which all chronic disorders rely upon... then stress, tension and fatigue will only weaken an already suspect structure.  The linkage of physical distress and emotional overload and eventual energetic hyper or hypo factors of and in function... might indeed foster an unconscious association with long term physical pain and its mental flip side... chronic anxiety.  

If both Palmer (6) and Freud (7) were correct... that the nervous system is a closed and circuitous route from mind to body and back... with only homeostasis in mind... then we can also assume that the active neurosis and the physical subluxation might go hand in hand relative to one's health and well being... on an energetic level.  The new and novel ideas that Palmer and Freud shared... that energy... by itself... could influence thought and matter... was finally coming into focus here.

Palmer and Freud shared a mirror image of nineteenth century mind/body vitalistic philosophy as well as a neuroenergetic understanding of physical and mental health that such vitalistic principles promoted.  They had developed therapeutic systems that worked to naturally release the tensions of excess energy in both mind and body by allowing for the specific reduction of the vertebral subluxation physically and hysterical neurosis conversationally through free association and/or hypnotically.

However, posture and the way by which it expresses itself during times of pain stress and anxiety, is the key to understanding the unconscious activities within the various ego states and the innate defensive initiatives that protective mechanisms assert during these times.  The analysis and interpretation of latent patient postures and their relationships to ongoing chronic or subclinical structural events offer the doctor of chiropractic a chance to disperse both emotional and structural energies before they can manifest themselves in what might become a full blown traditional diagnostic system of pain, stress and anxiety.

This simple idea that the common, everyday pain, stress and anxiety of everyday life and living could become a chronic physical and mental collection of symptoms is by no means a new thought (8).  It could be argued that the combination of a mind/body approach in analyzing and interpreting what might again be called an 'expressive posture' might be of value to doctors of chiropractic interested in changes in the patient's postural appearance and experience.  This also includes the moods and attitudes that accompany such postures as well as the degree to which they change over time.

Most expressive postures are likely to be present only during difficult sets of adjustment sessions. With this in mind, the doctor might attempt to deconstruct presenting postures by comparing them to those from prior visits... before the patient began to exhibit the present postural distress.  It also could follow that adjustive reductions of expressive postures, built around specific subluxation sites and accompanying specific states-of-mind, may help diminish mind/body pain, stress and anxiety while encouraging a new and gradual psychosomatic withdrawal from chronic, everyday bouts of ego based defensive myofascial contractures.

So, just as the ongoing reinforcement of pain, stress and anxiety results in the accumulation of structural distress and distortion, the measured relief of those same symptoms lowers or lessens the stimulatory energies present within the common pathways at the onset of the next episode, allowing for the gradual release of old neuronal learnings in favor of new learning.  This will raise the threshold for future ego defenses and subluxation postures.

If subluxation and anxiety are defensive reactions or stressful adaptations to pain, or any other energetic mind/body imbalances, must they be immediately corrected, or are they a process that must be gradually reduced allowing for new neurolearnings to take place over time while physical and myofascial tone resets... and mental energies seek rest?

In most cases, such subluxations are reduced by repetitive adjustments that promote a set of gradual and new neurolearnings.  It is therefore important that patients return for their care corrections immediately after the acute episode is resolved, if not only to reinforce the reduction of subluxation residuals, but also to clear out anxious associations with the body part that exhibited the postural expression of pain, stress and anxiety... especially as it relates to the organism's external environments and internal psychosomatic pressures (9),

The adjustment seeks to restore and/or equalize the neural pathways of posture and homeostasis. But the adjustment also must... on a psychosomatic level beyond the simple concept of mind and body... relieve and provide a new and conscious appreciation sf a reduction in anxiety levels. Corrective care, with postural indicators, will be associated with fewer episodes of chronic pain, stress and anxiety even after the acute subluxation is resolved, and conscious pain, stress and anxiety is reduced to a tolerable level.

This issue of neural energy and the need for adaptive postures to disseminate the overabundance of unconscious pain, stress and anxiety is a product of repetitive attempts mentally and physically to keep equilibrium honest within the organism (10). The very slim possibility that patients who fall victim to postural manifestations of unconscious conflicts could successfully fend off energy releasing conversion activity is not likely... and would... in the end... show both patient and doctors the power of the unconscious.  However, with the help of adjustive care, the cyclical circuit that allows for the uninhibited maintenance of the aberrant neuronal loop can be disoriented and very likely deconstructed to a point at which the threshold is too low to fire on a continuous basis.

The pains of the physical and the anxiety of the mental are energetic in nature, so much so that neither can be separated from the other, except for the presenting complaint and the order in which the patient has come to expect relief.  However, the mere presence of pain brings an associated stress and anxiety which cannot be quantified by simply asking the patient if they feel better.  Patients are often poor informative sources.  So we look again to the postural unconscious for help.

If we were to return to the philosophy of Palmer (11) and Stephenson (12) and entertain the safety pin cycle concept of neural travel, we see a simple but effective way to value the case for the reduction of excess mental energies that the mind produces and the possibility that its avenue of transition is... or will be... 'dammed back' over time.  If we were to look again at Freud's theories and postulations that the ego is first and foremost a 'bodily' ego, we might see a surprisingly definitive psychosomatic connect in the neurotic events that contribute to the development of a subluxation in an area of the cranial/brainstem... which may be predisposed to a hysterical conversion in patients where past traumas or injuries are common historical factors.  

If this is the case, then a true separation between mind and body is not only illogical but wholly indefinable as well.  Note also that Freud saw neurotic intensifiers such as past traumas... as byproducts of the nervous system as being 'dammed up' (in contrast to Palmer's 'dammed back' concept) without any alternative release except through a simple form of somatization (13), as chosen by the unconscious for its particular relevance to both anxious and energetic pathways.  This could be defined as the precursor to the cranial/brainstem vertebral subluxation and localized tension that may induce situational tension/psychodynamic headaches. 

This concept of 'damming up or back' should be likened to a hybrid concept termed as a  'subluxation neurosis' ...whereby patients with repetitive subclinical postures or positions of vague and ill defined pain are noted, charted, and followed closely during specific rounds of adjustive care. Though such adjustive care is sometimes discouraged as psychosomatic or even placebo like in nature... it could fill the vast middle ground of an intangible symptomatic picture that imaging and examination cannot diagnose and multidisciplinary care cannot adequately resolve.  The fact that both mind and body are able to produce and reduce these chronic symptomatic factors through their own innate or unconscious mechanisms shows that energy driven systems are indeed worthy of still more research and even more clinical respect. 

  1. Freud S. The Ego and the Id, The Standard Edition, 1923

  2. Reich W. Character Analysis, 3rd Edition, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1945 

  3. Homewood AE. The Neurodynamics of the Vertebral Subluxation. Chiropractic Publishers, 1981

  4. Lowen A. Depression and the Body, Penguin Press, New York, 1972

  5. Fenichell O. The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, W.W. Norton, New York, 1995

  6. Palmer BJ. The Subluxation Specific, The Adjustment Specific. The Palmer School, 1934

  7. Breuer J. Freud S. Studies in Hysteria. The Standard Edition, 1895

  8. Lowen A. The Betrayal of the Body. MacMIllan Company, New York, 1967

  9. Shafer RC. Basic Principles in Chiropractic Neuroscience. ACA Press. 1990

10. Freud S. A Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. The Standard Edition, 1905

11. Palmer BJ. Palmer's Law of Life. The Palmer School. 1958

12. Stephenson RW. Chiropractic Text Book. The Palmer School. 1927

13. Freud S. The Interpretation of Dreams. The Standard Edition. 1900

'Palmer, Freud and the Postural Unconscious' was first published in Dynamic Chiropractic, in July 2008, Vol 26, Issue 16, and has been reprinted in several additional journals in the USA and overseas since its first publication. This is essentially the same article...reprinted here... with additional edits.