ABSTRACT
Embodiment means that social experience finds sustained expression through sensomotoric coordinates, and literally enters the hardware of body and brain. Psychoanalytic knowledge of just how decisive and definitive are the first relationship experiences during the initial weeks and months over the long-term are given fascinating empirical support by way of interdisciplinary research on "embodiment" and early parenthood. Embodiment is a concept which can precisely explain psychoanalytic knowledge in new innovative ways. Psychoanalytic literature is rich with creative metaphors of the unrepresented and the unconscious that open up the understanding and, as are expressed in enactment, that transform the patient's split off traumatic memory into painful, though healing, processes of remembering. This chapter discusses how concepts of basic research and studies in the field of so-called "embodied cognitive science" and cognitive neurosciences offer first explanations for the spontaneous, "theory-free" appearance of innovative, creative thoughts in analysts.
