ABSTRACT

This chapter explores how embodiment both forms and is formed by the wider contexts of family, culture, and society. It also explores the process of transmission, and suggests that it is never a simple transcription, but always a negotiation between power and freedom. The consensus of social science writers is that in current Western society, more even than in human society generally, the body plays a unique and central role. Michel Foucault and his followers employ a very useful formulation: they talk of bodies, along with other apparently objective phenomena, as being produced by discourse. Social constructionism is a bracing corrective to the simplistic realism still prevalent in body psychotherapy circles as in much of psychotherapy as a whole. However, there are some serious problems with constructionism, both globally and in relation specifically to the body. The chapter suggests that body psychotherapists can learn from social theory: to be wary of claims to universality.