ABSTRACT

This book introduces body psychotherapy as one of the essential approaches in psychotherapy, reflecting the increasing integration of the body into clinical mental health practice.

The book offers an entirely new view on body psychotherapy based upon advanced research on embodiment, memory, emotion regulation, developmental psychology and body communication and an experiential and relational understanding of psychotherapy. Accordingly, the author grounds the theory of body psychotherapy on the theoretical approach of enactivism, which regards experience as arising from meaningful living interaction with others and their environment. The book, fortified with clinical examples, shows the distinctiveness of body psychotherapy as compared with a traditional talking therapy approach. It also convincingly demonstrates that each form of psychotherapy should consider body experiences.

This text will be a comprehensive foundation for psychotherapists of every orientation, scholars of the humanities and students and especially those wishing to integrate embodied experience into their understanding of their patients.

chapter 1|16 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|12 pages

Towards a definition of body psychotherapy

chapter 3|36 pages

The quest for natural aliveness

On the origins of body psychotherapy

chapter 4|10 pages

The legacy of the schools

chapter 5|26 pages

The living subject

chapter 6|40 pages

Body experience

The basis of self-experience

chapter 8|10 pages

Embodiment research

The sensorimotor basis of thinking and feeling

chapter 9|16 pages

Memory

Embodied remembering

chapter 10|36 pages

Emotions

Models of emotionality and the practice of body psychotherapy

chapter 11|32 pages

Child development

The shaping of experience in early affect motor dialogue

chapter 12|12 pages

Affect motor schemas as body narratives

chapter 13|22 pages

Defence and coping

Bodily forms of processing experience

chapter 14|38 pages

Communication with the body

Body behaviour and therapeutic interaction

chapter 15|20 pages

Transference and somatic resonance

chapter 16|6 pages

Moments of understanding

chapter 17|10 pages

Self-regulation and life regulation