Embodying analysis: the body and the therapeutic process

Abstract

This paper considers the transfer of somatic effects from patient to analyst, which gives rise to embodied countertransference, functioning as an organ of primitive communication. By means of processes of projective identification, the analyst experiences somatic disturbances within himself or herself that are connected to the split-off complexes of the analysand. The analyst's own attempt at mind-body integration ushers the patient towards a progressive understanding and acceptance of his or her inner suffering. Such experiences of psychic contagion between patient and analyst are related to Jung's 'psychology of the transference' and the idea of the 'subtle body' as an unconscious shared area. The re-attribution of meaning to pre-verbal psychic experiences within the 'embodied reverie' of the analyst enables the analytic dyad to reach the archetypal energies and structuring power of the collective unconscious. A detailed case example is presented of how the emergence of the vitalizing connection between the psyche and the soma, severed through traumatic early relations with parents or carers, allows the instinctual impulse of the Self to manifest, thereby reactivating the process of individuation.

Residues in the analyst of the patient's symbiotic connection at a somatic level: unrepresented states in the patient and analyst

“…In this relational framework, enactment may be the best way for unconscious traumatic aspects of the patient's experience, echoed in the analyst's parallel difficulties, to become available. See the Jungian literature (Cambray , Carvalho and , Maier , Martini , Solomon ) for recent explorations of this. All these are rooted in contemporary developments of Jung's seminal ideas about the field and its amplification through mutual unconsciousness (Jung , paras.…”

“…The respiratory symptom in Horace's case could be seen as a transitional object of a very primitive concrete type. Re‐enactment as a shared physical symptom which provides an opportunity for meaning to emerge is described by Martini (). This paper captures the experience of working at the bodily level of mutual disturbance between analyst and patient where psychic contagion is accepted as information.…”

Collective Trauma, Implicit Memories, the Body, and Active Imagination in Jungian Analysis1

“…However, despite the above‐mentioned theoretical developments and the growing importance that current research in trauma is giving to various forms of corporeal work (yoga, EMDR, focusing, among others), a certain division between somatic approaches and the analytical process seems to persist in clinical practice, as if including the body should be undertaken separately from the consulting room. In the Jungian—and psychoanalytic—literature, there is increasing recognition of the analyst's need to include a careful listening to his/her primitive and affective responses at the somatic level (Eulert‐Fuchs, 2020; Fogarty, 2018; Godsil, 2018; Kalsched, 2020; Lagutina, 2021; Martini, 2016; Merchant, 2015, 2016; Schellinski, 2009: Sidoli, 2000; Wilkinson, 2017; West, 2016; Zoppi, 2017, among others).…”

Mind, brain and body. Healing trauma: the way forward

“…Our initial experiencing in the countertransference may be a body‐based, right‐brained experience but alongside needs to be the contribution of the analyst's mind. Together they enable the analyst to make sense of emotional, body‐based experience, so aptly described by Martini in his recent award‐winning paper, ‘Embodying analysis: the body and the therapeutic process’, in which he argues that ‘the direct experience of the therapist's sensations of embodied countertransference may correspond to an inability of the patient's consciousness to accommodate unelaborated affective elements’ (, p. 6) and that the somatic experiences of the analyst represent ‘the result at the countertransferential level of the encounter with the patient's somatic unconscious’ (ibid., p. 9).…”