ABSTRACT

The embodied therapeutic relationship is also a primary given, part of the body's dream; to interpret it can often be to deny it. Embodied relating, then, is a specialised area of embodied cognition which involves what we might call, drawing on Eugene Gendlin. Merleau-Ponty discovers this reciprocity in the whole of reality. Embodiment, Flesh, is the matrix for human relationship; and body psychotherapy is perhaps the place where this can be brought most clearly into awareness. Something that emerges strongly from work on embodied cognition is the vital role of implicit or procedural knowledge in human learning. The chapter offers transference, countertransference, and projection are all bodily phenomena, based on the activation of procedural engrams which are always implicit—that is, out of awareness—and often also repressed—that is, not available to awareness. The Boston Change Process Study Group refers to this as "implicit relational knowing".