Progressive Relaxation: A Physiological and Clinical Investigation of Muscular States and Their Significance in Psychology and Medical Practice

In 1929, when the first edition of this book appeared, the potential value of the special relaxing procedure was recognized in the pages of The Journal. Jacobson's method of treating the emotionally maladjusted has now become fairly generally known among psychiatrists and neurologists even if it does not have quite the recognition that some of the other forms of psychotherapy have. Strictly speaking, perhaps, Jacobson's method of progressive relaxation is not a psychotherapeutic method but rather a technic of treatment which attempts to get at disease states through adjustment of the individual's neuromuscular mechanisms rather than his thinking processes. After considerable research in the field of physiology and a good deal of reading on the subject of relaxation and neuromuscular mechanisms, in 1929 Jacobson came out with this theory, which at that time was quite novel; namely, that with complete relaxation came the opportunity for the individual with disturbed kinetic