Relational
Perspectives on the Body
Edited by: Lewis Aron & Frances Sommer Anderson
ISBN: 0-881-63343-7
Publisher: The Analytic Press
Publication Date: 22/08/2006
Pages: 334
Review by Courtenay Young
Synopsis
Contemporary psychoanalysis has devoted so much of its attention to the relational and interpersonal aspects of psychic life that questions have begun to emerge regarding the place of the body and bodily experience in our psychological worlds. "Relational Perspectives on the Body" addresses these questions. Contemporary relational theorists synthesize a variety of theoretical trends and influences - including feminism and postmodernism - in order to provide innovative relational models of psyche-soma integration. Throughout the book, contributors pay attention to the analysand's and the analyst's experiences as they devise original technical responses to the multifaceted ways in which bodily experiences enter into the relational matrix of psychoanalytic treatment. In the process, contributors take up subjects such as breast cancer in the analyst, psychoanalytic treatment of Munchausen's Syndrome, physical deformity and musculoskeletal back pain.
This is one of the more intelligent books I have read about ‘the body’ in psychotherapy, and I have read many. Significantly it does not come from within the tradition of Body-Psychotherapy, but it certainly can inform it. For both the body-psychotherapist and for someone from outside of body-psychotherapy, this is almost essential reading, if any deeper understanding of the role of the body in psychotherapy and the body-mind relationship is desired.
The book is well-organised, with four sections on Relational Constructions of the Body, Linking the Mind and Body, the Material Body in the Relational Matrix, and the Place of Bodily Experience in the Psychoanalytical Process. However I would have to disagree somewhat with Aron, in his introduction, where he says, “(He) argues for an intersubjective, ‘two-body’ psychology. … (He) delineates the role of the body in mentalization and relates the clinical body to the reflexive mind.” This perpetuates the predominance of the mind in the relationship, so that it is not a body-mind dyad, but a mind-body hegemony. However, since this has been going on for about 6,000 years (since the rise of patriarchy), it is perhaps only to be expected, even though it is also endemic to psychoanalysis. The Victorian mind-body split (mentioned by Harriet Kimble Wyre in her chapter “The Embodiment of Desire”) was just a later manifestation of this, though it particularly influenced Freud in his seeking of respectability for this new profession of psychoanalysis in body-phobic Victorian Vienna. Wrye adds the extra dimension of racism to this split, as was also common in the Victorians, and particularly in colonialism, “… locating intelligence and religious discipline in themselves and primitive bodily states in the natives.” which is nicely and very vividly contrasted with an example of “ … another level of consciousness, the transcendent and mind-altering transformational bodily experience.” (p. 108-9)
There is an intelligence, a richness and a depth to this book. I particularly liked Ron Balamuth’s chapter on “Re-membering the Body’ as it brings out the paradoxical experiences of working with the ‘lived body’ where one is often working more with absences than with the presence of something specific or problematic. And I loved the Taoist poem by Ursula LeGuin, The Uses of Not, that he uses at the beginning of the chapter. Karen Hoppenwasser’s article, ‘Listening to the Body’ is also very interesting, referring to van der Kolk’s work with traumatic shock and Damasio’s work on neural networks. I also liked Harriet Kimble Wrye’s article on ‘The Embodiment of Desire: Relinking the bodymind within the analytic dyad.’ This article underlies an increasing trend that is noticeable in psychoanalysis where certain aspects of the patient’s body and the analyst’s body are now playing a noticeable part in the analysis. (Dosamantes-Beaudry, 1997; Stone, 2006)
There was a moving article by Barbara Pizer on breast cancer (her own), bringing the analyst’s body clearly and sympathetically into the therapeutic space. I also enjoyed reading in Tamsin Looker’s chapter, “The Healing Moment” that Freud, and psychoanalysis, “abandoned the (patient’s) experiencing body … that remembers and carries meaning and that, above all, seeks to connect her to others … and that the actual body was eclipsed by the fantasized body …” (p. 239) At last! Someone has said it! However, this is slightly diminished by the following note that these realisations about the marginalization of the body “ … delayed our understanding of dissociation, which is, of course, a body-based experience” (p. 256). Looker also writes, “It is the analyst’s unexamined mind-body disconnection that mystifies and ties the hands of the patient. This disconnect will be a tangible and critical feature of the enactment of disturbed relational patterns and therefore a major focus for the process of working through. The patient will be better able to tell the analyst how he needs to use her if the analyst is more interested in listening to her patient and to herself from an embodied place than rushing in to tell the patient what she thinks she knows.” (p. 256) There is also a nice dream analysis in Anderson’s chapter on “Muscularskeletal Back Pain” that is reminiscent of Arnold Mindell’s work in “Dreambody” (Mindell, 1982)
My only major criticism is that the scope of this book was not wider, based almost exclusively within American (New York) psychoanalysis, and referring mainly to fairly traditional mainstream texts. The “original technical responses” (see synopsis) are somewhat less than original as many of these have been used in Body-Psychotherapy at various times over the last 150 years (since Pierre Janet) and it still seems that, for the psychoanalysts, Wilhelm Reich never existed. (Young, 2006)
DOSAMANTES-BEAUDRY, I. (1997) Somatic Experience in Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 14: 517-530
MINDELL, A. (1982) Dreambody. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
STONE, M. (2006) The analyst’s body as tuning fork: Embodied resonance as countertransference. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 51: 109-124
YOUNG, C. (2006) "150 Years On: The history, significance and scope of Body-Psychotherapy today": Int. J. of Body, Movement & Dance in Psychotherapy: Vol.1: No.1:
Courtenay Young is a past-President of the European Association for Body-Psychotherapy (EABP) and has been representing them at EAP meetings for the last 10 years. He works as a counsellor in the NHS and has a private psychotherapy practice in Edinburgh.