ABSTRACT
Authentic Movement is a practice of structured movement and witnessing which enables participants to explore this sensory data, discovering forms that emerge in that process. This forming of movement impulses, through being expressed and witnessed, therefore supports metabolization and containing capacities in the psychoanalyst. The movement gesture may be as small as an inhale of breath or as sudden as a run across the room. Allowing movement impulses to emerge and embodying them is similar to Freud’s streaming of the unconscious through verbal impulses. Witnesses bring a receptive attention to the entire field, which is comprised of the mover moving, the witness attending to their experience of seeing the movement, and the larger space the mover moves through as well as sounds that may carry or vibrate through that space. Wilfred Bion described containment as an intersubjective process which provides a boundaried mental space in which thoughts can be born.
