Radix is a personal growth process developed by Charles "Chuck" Kelley in the 1960s and 70s directly out of the work and ideas of the radical and controversial psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich.
Reich was the figure chiefly responsible for bringing the body into psychoanalysis. He was a favoured student and colleague of Freud in the 1920s but was later expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association, ostensibly for his political views. As Reich's ideas developed, he posited the 'functional identity' of mind and body, putting forward the view that the body presents a 'frozen' history of our life experience. Since 'the body does not lie', he maintained, it can be a direct route to unconscious material.
One of Reich's central concepts was the 'life force' that flows through the body, giving rise to and bringing together emotion, body, mind and spirit. He observed that in most human beings the flow of 'orgone energy' (as he named the life force) was blocked or limited, impairing our emotional experience, as well as our ability to think clearly and the mobility and health of our bodies. These chronic patterns of tension Reich called muscular armouring.
After Reich's premature death in 1957 (shortly after his books were burned under an injunction of US authorities), Charles Kelley continued his work with the concept of the life force. He renamed it 'radix' (meaning root or source) and focused much of his research on the effects of the rhythm or 'pulsation' of the radix flow, thereby expanding our understanding of emotional experience and expression. As an experimental psychologist Kelley had specialised in vision, and he put an emphasis on the eyes and the 'aliveness' experienced there as being central to consciousness and wellbeing. Unlike Reich, who trained as a medical doctor and psychiatrist, Kelley was determined to empower people by focusing on health, not illness. For him, working with the life force or radix meant focusing on the source of life and vitality.
An additional contribution that Kelley made to Reichian theory was his understanding of the relationship between the evolution of human purposive activity and the simultaneous development of muscular armour. Growing out of his understanding in this area is a significant shift of emphasis away from the medical frame of reference in which Reich saw his work. Kelley maintained that 'opening the feelings' through Radix is primarily an educational rather than a medical approach.
Learning to free the life force can develop the ability to feel, think and act, and all three areas are considered important in Radix work. However, in our society and culture, feeling has often been valued less than thinking or achieving so that the primary goal of Radix work is frequently focussed on regaining the body's sense of aliveness. Pain, fear and anger may well be a part of this process but, as these 'difficult' feelings are allowed to live, joy, love, trust and spiritual awareness also have more space to grow. In this way Radix work can awaken a vital, authentic and new experience of life.
Since Charles Kelley founded the Radix Institute in the early 1970s, the Radix training programme has continued to develop the concept of pulsation of the life force, incorporating recent work in areas such as trauma, abuse, emotional containment, interpersonal relationships, and boundaries.
Charles "Chuck" Kelley died in 2005, aged 82.