ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a description of the attribute of gesture as humankind’s earliest forms of communication – expressions of a ‘talking’ body. Child gestures and a clinical example are listed. Symbolic postures are described as the underlying attitudes out of which the archaic shaman’s gestures and stories emerged and examples are given from various cultural and mythological traditions. In depth psychotherapy, the importance of being aware of the body is stressed – understanding how it serves as the container for symptoms of a disturbed unconscious life, psychosomatic indwelling having been interrupted and gestures becoming stilted. Row repetitive gestures often tell unconscious stories and, for the skilled therapist, can become openings to the ‘implicit self.’ Hence, an analyst’s sensitivity to the gestural dimension of his work is shown to be an important element in the shamanic sensitivities necessary to mediate broken psych/soma connections, as the shaman complex continually connects mind with animal body and bridges the two, making a seam between them, like the molten gold that mends broken pots in the ancient Oriental tradition.
