Interview: "Possibilities and potential of Psychosomatic
Energetics"
D R . R EIM AR B AN IS D IS C U SSES TH E POSS IB ILI T IES AN D POTEN T I AL
O F PS YC H OSOM ATI C EN E R GET IC S
- By Claus Georg Tornai -
New Life Through Energy Healing
... is the promising title of a book by Dr. Reimar Banis, a general
practitioner specializing in naturopathic healing. Motivated by the desire
to get more deeply into the mental and emotional causes of chronic
ailments patients, he embarked on a multi-year search for some form of
naturopathic therapy that would deliver lasting healing results and which
spoke to the psyche. In the process, he developed a new and unique
energetic/homeopathic testing and therapy procedure which he calls
Psychosomatic Energetics (PSE). Using this method made it possible
for emotional conflicts to be tested for the first time. Dr. Banis has thus
validated ancient shamanistic lore, according to which conflicts reside in
a person’s energy field, stealing energy from their victims. Dr. Banis
defines conflicts as emotional injuries from the past that prevent people
from being fully themselves. Subconscious emotional conflicts thereby
provoke both physiological and psychological ailments. Even common
parlance is aware of the mind-body connection, as can be seen in
expressions such as “a belly full of rage”, “stomach all tied up in knots”,
“heartbroken” or “choked up with emotion”. Certain emotional topics
manifest themselves directly as anxiety diseases, depression or
agitation in specific body regions.
For the first time, the interrelationships of body, mind and spirits can be clearly and objectively demonstrated with
the aid of this method—which can also, using a custom-made test device codeveloped with a biophysicist, test
how much energy a person has and what is impairing the energy flow. PSE can build bridges between orthodox
and alternative medicine, because, for example, people with endogenous depression have very low emotional
readings. PSE thereby confirms orthodox-medicine diagnoses, expanding them, moreover, considerably in the
energetic direction. PSE has the great advantage of being able to directly measure conflict sizes and then treat
them successfully. The method’s great success has been confirmed in numerous clinical studies. In Germany
alone, more than 400 specialists, physicians, psychotherapists and naturopathic healers are using it successfully;
worldwide, there are over 1000 therapists in more than 20 countries.
Dr. Banis, what prompted you to develop Psychosomatic Energetics?
It was a process that took years. I used to treat my patients on the psychic level with Bach Flowers, etc. It worked
pretty well, but unfortunately only for a short time in most cases. Often, the patients returned after a while with the
same problems as before. Then I switched over to treatment with homeopathic high potentiations and, once
again, had good results at first. But here too, I noticed that patients were returning after a bit with the same
problems. So, I experimented and found out that what I needed to do was to put together a complex of
homeopathic agents which included all of the emotional facets of a problem. Agitation, for example, also includes
anxiety, tension, perhaps suppressed anger etc., i.e. a bundle of different emotions. These cannot be eliminated
with just one Bach Flower or one homeopathic agent, but must be approached from all sides and using a variety
of potentiations. This way, I finally got the long-term healing results that I wanted. I also found out that people’s
inner and outer aspects often do not match. To stay with the Agitation example: on the outside, people often
maintained a calm-seeming demeanour in order to camouflage their inner agitation. Or a person might be very
gentle in everyday life, but have a belly full of rage and doesn’t want to express those aggressions.
What does the term “Psychosomatic Energetics” mean?
Materialistic orthodox medicine only recognizes the body (Greek soma) and considers the psyche to be a property
of matter. I am convinced, however, that the mind (soul) is an independent entity and that, moreover, there are
subtle energies that as yet cannot be objectively measured. When it comes to health and a meaningful life,
however, a harmonious interplay of body and mind is essential. Anyone who has sufficient subtle energy feels
fresh and lively, and is generally healthy. The designation that I chose, Psychosomatic Energetics (PSE), thus
represents, as it were, a medical/psychological worldview in which subtle energy plays an integral part.
With what kind of symptoms do people come to you and the therapists you’ve trained?
And what is your success rate?
Most patients are people with chronic ailments who have not been helped by standard medical and
psychotherapeutic methods, or who are looking for a supplement to conventional treatment. Despite the fact that
most of these are severe chronic cases, we nevertheless have a success rate greater than 80%, defining success
as either complete healing or at least significant improvement. With children, our rate is actually around 90%—
probably because they are generally more open emotionally and energetically. Of course, therapeutic success
and how long it takes to achieve it depend upon the severity of the ailment. There is an additional group of mostly
healthy patients wanting to undertake preventive measures, usually because they themselves have felt, or have
heard from people they know, how helpful conflict elimination can be for one’s overall well-being—and also that it
helps one progress on the spiritual level.
Your method treats a disease’s underlying conflicts; in your view, what is a conflict, and what does it
signify?
To start with, conflicts indicate that people are undergoing learning experiences. When a child burns its finger on
a hot stove, it will approach the stove more carefully next time. In this sense, emotional conflicts are trauma
consequences that make one proceed more prudently, so they represent a kind of protective function. On the one
hand, they help shape our personality, give the mind a particular structure, and are also responsible for character
traits and personal maturation. On the other hand, conflicts also hide or suppress certain emotional components;
psychology calls these shadows. Avoidance strategies often limit a person’s scope of action, making one more
uptight, less free and often unable to freely enjoy the present. Moreover, energy blocks disrupt cellular
interactions, so that, over the long term, physical ailments can arise.
Psychosomatic Energetics is a diagnostic and therapeutic procedure. Why isn’t it enough to simply name
the conflicts based on the test results, and then allow patients to deal with the conflicts on their own?
Well, experience has shown that it’s not enough. I’ve had patients who told me after testing that they already
knew about this conflict and had been having it treated kinesiologically or psychotherapeutically for years.
However, since the conflict still tested active, it evidently had not been treated to conclusion. In my view, complete
healing calls for energy measures as well.
The Reba testdevice
What is the course of treatment?
After I collect the patient history (anamnesis), I briefly explain the procedure. PSE is both a diagnostic and
therapeutic method. Using a special test device, the four elementary levels of the human energy field are
measured: Vital = body; Emotional = sensation/feeling; Mental = mind/memory; Causal = spirituality/intuition. The
brainwave frequencies stimulated by our test device are related in some manner to the aura. I connect the patient
to the test device (a frequency generator) and perform a stress test on the aforementioned four energy levels with
their corresponding vibrations, which the device transmits at gradually increasing intensities. Based on the
patient’s reaction to a kinesiological muscle test, I can tell which level of stress provokes a reaction. In the next
step, I test to see which conflict is currently present, and how strong its energy block is. I then check to see
whether the agents associated with this conflict will be effective with this patient. The therapy is performed using
special homeopathic agents that act on the conflict and resolve them during the course of therapy. The average
treatment time to deal with a conflict is around 3 to 5 months. As a rule, follow-up testing will reveal another
conflict. Almost always, there is only a single conflict active at a given time, which I regard as one of nature’s
protective mechanisms, preventing people from being overburdened. The other conflicts remain passive in the
background until the active foreground conflict is eliminated. Evidently, over the course of their personal history,
people put on on various layers that, though they protect against injury, also considerably limit their freedom of
motion.
A conflict is an appendage of the Aura, connected
to the host via an “umbilical cord” and feeding
parasitically off its energy.
Psychosomatic Energetics is applied to a number of somatic and psychic ailments – but might the
method also be meaningful for those who simply wish to develop further mentally, to become a better
person?
When we detect energy blocks, then we can almost always eliminate them, with the result that people are better
able to make use of their inherent potential and experience life fully again. Whether they actually do that is of
course their decision. In most cases, we see considerable positive emotional development; people become more
open, more sensitive, are better able to feel what they want and are better able to attain their goals.
But the patient’s own contribution during treatment can’t be replaced by your method …
One can say that if a person takes homeopathic agents while lacking the will to really get healthy, then they won’t
be effective. Otherwise, though, the healing process proceeds more or less subconsciously—through intense
dreaming, for example.
What other holistic interrelationships have you come across in your research?
Testing has shown that the four temperaments (sanguine, melancholic, choleric and phlegmatic, according to
ancient humoral theory) correspond to specific conflicts. Plus, Fritz Riemann’s [German psychoanalyst, 19021979] four basic types of fear can also be thus classified.
Where do the classical homeopaths stand with respect to your method?
They tend to be dismissive, partly out of ignorance. Yet the two methods work together well in clinical practice.
For example, if a patient has migraine and the tested conflict is Agitation, then the migraine can be treated quickly
and effectively with the appropriate simple remedy, while at the same time treating the underlying conflict with
PSE, thus ensuring that the migraine will stay away permanently. PSE treats the conflict directly while classical
homeopathy deals with the life energy. All in all, our method works somewhat slowly but constantly, and with
lasting results.
Might the various agents, over the long term, lead to hyper-stimulation?
We have never noticed this in all the thousands of cases we’ve observed.
Are there any other scientific studies of your method?
There have been a number of clinical studies—including one carried out by myself and Dr. Ulrike Banis on 336
patients, as well as another with 226 patients carried out by Dr. Birgitt Holschuh-Lorang, a general practitioner
who works with our method. The results are almost identical, with success rates of 80.4% and 85% respectively.
The next step would be systematic randomized placebo studies—but unfortunately we have not yet got that far. I
should also mention the so-called Butterfly Project: a retired principal in Austria came across our method and—
with the agreement of and coordinating with the school staff, teachers and parents—systematically treated a firstyear grade school class, freshman and senior high school classes for a year, achieving significant progress. All in
all, the students became calmer, more sociable, more willing to learn, more obedient and in general exhibited
more joie de vivre, with the youngest ones making the most progress. The success of this project led to its
expansion under the leadership of Dr. Ulrike Banis: systematic treatment of children starting in kindergarten. The
costs are borne by the Verein für PSE (PSE Association). We chose the name “Butterfly Project” to symbolize the
fact that marvelous vivacious “butterflies” emerge from energetically weakened “caterpillar kids”.
You say that conflicts are treated according to the onionskin principle: could you elaborate on that?
Conflict treatment has evolved over time. First, I developed the appropriate agents, then I began testing patients,
finding in almost all cases only a single conflict which I then treated. After a few weeks, I found that the conflict
was still present. This led to the realization that a conflict, on average, takes 3 to 5 months of treatment before it is
completely eliminated. Then—to our surprise at first—a new conflict would pop up. We now know that this kind of
succession is more the rule than the exception. In fact, only children and very spiritually advanced persons have
just one or two conflicts. For most people, it’s a longer process, kind of like open strip mining in which you dig
deeper a layer at a time. In their dreams, many people regress farther and farther back into their childhood, but
the conflict after that might just jump back to the present. By the way, as a basic principle, we always treat, one
step at a time, that which is currently front and center (for whatever reason). We don’t try to force closed doors
open. This is a psychoenergetic growth process that, for the most part, leads slowly and imperceptibly—seldom
dramatically—to an improvement in the patient’s overall condition. If life energy begins to flow more strongly, it
seems to activate older conflict levels, as in an old riverbed, where the silt on the bottom is roiled up when the
water begins to flow more rapidly.
The Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch depicts the realm of the subconscious, populated by
conflicts which are symbolized by the insectoid horror figures in the lower part of the picture. War and its
underlying appetite for destruction can be seen in the upper parts of the picture, where cities are burning and
people are being gruesomely tortured. In the lower part we encounter all of humanity’s sins. Learned scholars turn
into jackasses (left) when stripped of their veneer of sophistication. People writhe in bizarre pain-induced
contortions (lower right). Saint Anthony can only cling to
a rocky cliff and pray.
You have coined the term “Central Conflict”. What
does this mean exactly?
The Central Conflict is that which in a person’s past
most frightened him, that which he most wants to be
protected from even today. As it happens, the Central
Conflict often turns up as the first or second conflict. It is
a trauma that preforms psychological and physiological
ailments because it is crucially significant to the
metabolic system and also a person’s character. It might
have to do with a disappointment; it might be that a
person is afraid, whatever: it is always the case that a
person feels existentially threatened and emotionally cut
to the quick. After that, one is a “marked man”. In selfdefense, one then (to use a visual metaphor) tries to
wrap up this trauma and cram it into a deep dark drawer
where it will never be seen again. Unfortunately, this
doesn’t work over the long term. Certain existential
stresses or life crises can reactivate the trauma by
resonating with it. The way I explain it is that people, as
they develop and vibrate at higher levels psychically,
eventually reach a vibrational level that enters into resonance with their Central Conflict. It is like an improperly
balanced car tire that begins to shimmy dangerously at higher speeds.
So, for you, the Central Conflict is crucial to a person’s character, is that right?
Yes, it determines character structure (sanguinic/hysteric, melancholic/schizoid, choleric/depressive,
phlegmatic/obsessive-compulsive)—not always completely, but nevertheless demonstrably in some form. With
the sanguine type, for instance, you always find “quickly enthused emotionally”, “never being really good enough”
and “having to prove oneself”. People with “Rage”, on the other hand, will tend to have upper abdominal ailments.
In the ancient healing lore, the figure of the choleric represents a character structure that has swallowed its
aggressions and thus has gallbladder problems (the word choleric comes from the Greek “chol”, gallbladder or
gall).
Could you give us a specific example of the way a Central Conflict works?
The Central Conflict is often associated with severe chronic ailments. In the case of the aforementioned young
man with the conflict “Helplessness”, testing revealed a schizoid (melancholic) character type. These are people
who have an elevated tendency to develop energetic insufficiency in the first (pelvis) or seventh (head) Chakra—
the two are closely related. This makes them more susceptible to disease, and they also tend to be solitary types.
The man underwent psychiatric treatment but also wanted to do something more, which is why he came to my
practice. In time, we were able to eliminate his psychosis; one day he was able to discontinue the
psychopharmaceuticals and he became symptom-free.
Character types and associated energy centers (Chakras)
Once you know a person’s character, can you then provide useful verbal advice and assistance?
As a matter of fact, thanks to our knowledge of temperament we can offer type-appropriate life counseling. Each
character type has certain “vices” to be avoided and “virtues” to be encouraged. For example, you can give
parents quite precise child-rearing tips based on the child’s character type. When it comes to problems in marital
relationships, we can impart helpful advice on how best to get along with the partner’s character type. And, when
a person marries, it really is best to marry one’s so-called “better half”—i.e. someone who compensates one’s
own shadow, but who also is not too far from one’s own type. Therefore, for each character type there really is
only one very specific best match with whom one will feel “whole”. However, the long-term goal is to eventually
attain this harmony in oneself, by oneself, without external supplementation from another person.
How does a person change once the Central Conflict, or all conflicts, have been eliminated?
A person becomes potentially freer and more open, no longer as driven, and can begin to act more harmoniously
within his or her character structure. One sees this particularly well in children and spiritually advanced persons.
Many people report becoming more authentic, accommodating and yet also more assertive and self-determined.
Previously rationally-oriented people begin to develop their emotional side, formerly withdrawn people suddenly
seek the company of others. In more simply structured people, I’ve noted that they exhibit more potential,
noticeable in small changes in their lifestyle, which initially only those closest to them pick up on. The more
spiritually advanced people are, and the more open they are to working on themselves and in their lives, the
better the treatment results will be.
The difference between the dissolution of the Central Conflict first, as opposed to the subsequent dissolution of all
the other conflicts, consists primarily of the fact that those that are already advanced spiritually will experience a
remarkable and unique breakthrough in their lives. With each additional processed conflict, people often will feel
they are getting ever closer in touch with themselves. The acquired character, however, does not therefore simply
dissolve, nor do suddenly all the character types merge together as equals, as one might initially expect. Life
experience is not simply extinguished in this manner. Yet people are better able to take charge of their lives, more
ready to work on themselves, because the energy blocks have been eliminated. The Causal reading (i.e. intuitive
ability) goes up markedly, as testing shows. However, the decision to use this potential to live life more fully is up
to each individual’s free will.
In your opinion, which higher-level goal exists in every person, aside from the understandable wish for a
healthy mind and body? What is the meaning of human upward development, and how can conflict
resolution contribute to attaining this goal?
I suspect that, during the course of the development of civilizations and cultures, people have undergone
traumatic experiences because of the incessant wars and battles, leading to severe psychic indurations. Other
therapists think so as well, such as the British psychoanalyst, who also works with reincarnation, Dr. Roger
Woolger. Also, somatic psychotherapists who work at very deep subconscious levels, such as the Norwegian
Gerda Boyesen, have come to the same conclusion. The traumas are shaped over time energetically into a
Central Conflict, having as a consequence certain psychic indurations and defensive postures, which in turn can
be related to a specific character type. Additional conflicts then build upon this Central Conflict, and they’re not
necessarily a lesser burden than the other conflicts. In the initial phases of human civilization, people had a
childlike innocence, but then came the Fall of Mankind and the end of innocence; all that remains is a nostalgic
memory. At some point, a person’s true inward being would like to emerge again. And when, someday, man frees
himself from all the accumulated encrustations, the Psyche will be ennobled and more mature, because it has
developed a true consciousness of self and attained harmony of character.
In many cases, at the end of treatment there still exists a Heart Conflict situated in the fourth Chakra. Why
do you think that is?
Experience has shown that this happens particularly in people who are already very advanced spiritually. The
conflict acts energetically like a Central Conflict. Treating it then results in yet another great leap forward. The
heart is the center of our energy system. And of course man’s goal, as all the religions teach, is being able to love
ourselves and expand our altruistic brotherly love.
Many thanks for this interesting conversation!
Biography
MD. General practitioner specializing in naturopathic healing procedures. Born in West Berlin.
Naturopath since 1975 after two years of training at the DH all-day school in Bochum. Studied
human medicine at the University of Heidelberg; PhD in thermoregulation and disease foci.
American state exam (ECFMG) 1984. 1985 to 1999 practiced as health-plan family doctor, since
then as a private physician. Medical head of training for the Vegatest Method for a number of
years. Co-developer of segment electrography and thermoregulation. Worldwide participation in
Psychosomatic Energetics seminars, a new naturopathic method developed by Reimar Banis.
Claus Georg Tornai, born 1967, has been interested since early adolescence in life’s central
questions: What is man’s origin, man’s destination; what is the meaning of life? As a free-lance
journalist specializing in religious, psychological and alternative-healing issues, he regularly writes
articles on these topics.
* DISCLAIMER:The information on this website is not medical science or medical advice. This information is not backed up by
scientific evidence. This is just for your information. This information has not been evaluated by the FDA.