IBP History

Dr. Jack Lee Rosenberg, the founder of Integrative Body Psychotherapy (IBP), began his professional career as a dentist in 1958. He was teaching, doing research, and studying at the University of California Dental School, when he became the Director of Counseling at the University of the Pacific, School of Dentistry. In 1971, Dr. Rosenberg received his doctorate in Clinical Psychology and began practicing psychotherapy.

In 1963, Dr. Rosenberg began traveling to the Esalen Institute, in Big Sur, California, where he studied with the great leaders of the Human Potential Movement: Fritz Perls (Gestalt therapy), Abraham Maslow, Alexander Lowen, Will Shuts, John Periocus, Rollo May, Carl Rogers, Moshe Feldenkrais, Ida Pauline Rolf (Rolfing). At the Esalen Institute, he also studied Eastern philosophies and became a yoga practitioner. Rosenberg was particularly influenced by the work of Robert K. Hall, M.D. (Lomi School). 

From 1968 to 1976, Dr. Rosenberg was a training therapist and board member at the Gestalt Institute of Psychotherapy in San Francisco. In fact, Rosenberg's first name for IBP was "Gestalt Body Psychotherapy." For over eight years, he studied and did Freudian Psychoanalysis with Jean Pouteu, M.D.  He worked with the leading therapists of that time: Dr. Philip Cucurudo (Reichian therapy), Jim Simkin, Ph.D., Jack Downing, M.D., (founder of the Gestalt Institute of San Francisco), Elaine Kepner, Ph.D. , (Gestalt therapy), and Janie Ryan, M.A.  Dr. Rosenberg was in individual therapy for ten years with Victoria Hamilton, Ph.D., an Object Relations therapist who assisted John Bowlby, of Attachment theory fame. (Dr. Hamilton also trained in Object Relations therapy/theory with R. D. Laing and Donald Winnicott.) All these different therapeutic approaches are seamlessly integrated into IBP's implementation model. 

In 1985, Marjorie Rand, Ph.D., and Diana Asay, M.A., helped organize and formalize the structure of IBP in Dr. Rosenberg's book, Body, Self and Soul - Sustaining Integration. Dr. Rand also organized and developed their IBP training groups into what is now the IBP Central Institute professional training program. Dr. Rosenberg and Dr. Rand assigned the task of developing IBP institute and practitioner certification criteria, and IBP training program standards, to their current IBP Advisory Board member, Beverly Kitaen Morse, Ph.D., and former board members, Myron Goldenberg, Ph.D., and Tom Paris, Ph.D.   In 1986, Dr. Rand became the IBP Director of New Institutes, and in 1995, Dr. Morse became the Executive Director of the IBP Central Institute. Through its books, trainings and workshops, IBP's reputation as a highly efficient and effective body oriented implementation model for psychotherapy spread worldwide. IBP Institutes were certified in the United States, Canada, and Europe, using a standardized curriculum and a growing group of IBP Certified Teachers.
Dr. Morse was introduced to IBP by Marjorie Rand in 1977, and has been part of IBP ever since. Dr. Morse was a major organizing force in developing IBP theory, practice, and its training program. She is currently the Executive Director of both the IBP Central Institute and the IBP International Institutes. She has studied and continues to utilize relevant Eastern philosophies and practices in the ongoing development and refinement of IBP.  Currently, IBP integrates the most effective aspects of Psychoanalysis, Object Relations Theory, Gestalt therapy, Reichian therapy, Self Psychology, Bioenergetics, Feldenkrais, Transpersonal Psychology, and Eastern philosophies and practices into a highly efficient implementation system of psychotherapeutic treatment. 

Somatic Perspectives on Psychotherapy Podcast: Jack Rosenberg & Beverly Kitaen-Morse: Integrative Body Psychotherapy (40:34)