ABSTRACT
A psychoanalytic approach has traditionally emphasized the construction of a narrative, thus engaging the part of the brain, the neocortex, where language is stored and processed. It must be noted that the trajectory of this process begins with the word applied to the body sensation and leads to the body’s relief. Knowing that traumatically experienced material is not encoded in a symbolic, but in a procedural, way suggests that we might rethink this. To that end, the work we attempt to describe here reverses this trajectory. P. Ogden et al. (2005) refers to this reversed trajectory as “bottom-up,” distinct from the “top-down” direction of creating a narrative that will provide more coherency. Memory, aect, and image arise from a deep, somatic source, not a verbal or a narrative source. e body experience is allowed to remain a body experience until its qualities can be felt fully, perhaps for the rst time.
