EMBODIED RELATING: THE GROUND OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

Nick Totton

Truly integrating body psychotherapy with verbal work means recognising that our embodied perception is fundamental to all psychotherapy practice. Embodied relating is not an obscure psychotherapeutic theory, but something embedded in our everyday life: we can all ‘do’ embodied relating, though some do it better than others. Like many other important aspects of life, it generally happens of its own accord, but sometimes benefits from close examination. 

I believe that all relationship is initially between bodies; this is the concrete experience from which we derive abstractions like ‘transference’, ‘countertransference’ and ‘projection’. If we explore embodiment, we encounter relationship; if we explore relationship, we encounter embodiment. Therapy is more powerful when the practitioner is able to recognise the constant interplay between these two aspects of being human, and to follow and support the shifts of charge from one to the other. This lets us identify and process the many situations in which relational problems between therapist and client are best understood as issues of embodiment.

I will be arguing for a shift in psychotherapy from the visual to the visceral. By the visual I mean the observer stance which focuses across space on what we perceive to be happening in the client; shifting towards the visceral means focusing on what is happening in our own bodies as we are directly affected by the client’s presence. This supports us in dropping our detachment and committing to the here-and-now embodied relationship.

I will start with a fairly brief presentation of these ideas, and hope to move quite soon towards a discussion.