ABSTRACT
Troubled minds often come with troubled bodies. In an essay on "Embodiment," Bollas observes, "Maternal libido cathects the infant's body and expresses itself through a laying-on of hands in the innumerable caresses that stimulate and gratify the body. In this chapter the author focuses on the therapist's own bodily experience as a means of helping clients reach and experience aspects of them that are predominantly nonverbal and often deeply cut off from direct, felt awareness. To the author's client Danielle, Bollas' account would have seemed like romantic or science fiction. Danielle had always known the story of her birth, told to her repeatedly by her mother. The narratives of her traumatic birth and the sequela she had told herself, lovers, and therapists were true, but they were only a partial truth. The spaces into which the author entered through his own body with Danielle and Zeke were somewhat different from what is usually conceptualized as countertransference.
