ABSTRACT
I have been intrigued for some time by how the body has been perceived within psychotherapeutic culture. A question I have posed and attempted to answer in this chapter is: how has the body come to occupy such a peculiar space within psychotherapy? It is as if, as psychotherapists, we are not sure where to put the body, or even whose body to concentrate on: the client’s or the therapist’s. Bodies can be seen as fearful objects where certain taboos come into play-for example, the whole area of touching in psychotherapy is fraught with ambivalence, or even anxiety. In some sense the body becomes silent and is almost written out of psychotherapy as a dangerous ‘thing’. When it is written about, it is predominantly the client’s body that becomes the focus of attention; the therapist’s body is marginalised or seen as merely a receptacle for transferential phenomena. This chapter looks at these issues and the key debates around the body in psychotherapy. These are crucial areas to debate due to the centrality of psychotherapist embodiment within this book. I will begin with a historical overview of the body in psychotherapy which provides a context for the importance of addressing the body within the therapeutic encounter. There will be a critical discussion of the impact of mind-body dualism on psychotherapeutic culture, and the difficulties of integrating bodily phenomena into psychotherapy. An example of this is provided by exploring the concept of somatisation. This is also a key concept, and its use within psychotherapy discourse is ambivalent. Indeed, it was the concept of somatisation that started my interest in the research presented in this book.
