ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a grounded understanding of what the often-used phrase “embodied relationship” really involves; to look at the clinical implications; and suggests how psychotherapists' can move beyond the infant-focused concept of “attachment” to think instead about the nature of their social bond and their bond with the other-than-human. The social bond, partly influenced by these new attachment patterns, shifted from a free partnership of equals to a patriarchal hierarchy underwritten by theism, a state of affairs psychically damaging to every man, woman, and child. Embodiment in this sense can often suppress embodiment in the other sense, substituting an objectified perception of the body. In a culture largely alienated from embodied experience, there is an ongoing struggle between lived embodiment and the body as object, in which body psychotherapy has always been deeply involved.
