ABSTRACT
Chapter 9 negotiates the challenge of outlining an embodied therapeutic disposition, conducive to furthering body-mind integration. Initially, it discusses Buddhist meditative practice as enhancing the therapist’s introspective, perceptual and empathetic capabilities. It then focuses on Zen’s particular contribution to mutual psyche-somatic ‘attunement’ and its relation to the concepts of ‘attunement’ and ‘interpretation’ in contemporary psychoanalysis. The terms ‘intercorporeality’ and ‘interpenetration’ between analyst and patient further refine these concepts. Finally, the notion of the therapist’s embodied empathic-compassionate role as constitutive of the patient’s body-mind integration and transmutation is introduced.
