About a Body: Working with the Embodied Mind in Psychotherapy

Edited by: Jenny Corrigal, Helen Payne & Heward Wilkinson

ISBN: 9780415400725

ISBN-10: 0415400724

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date: 22/08/2006

Pages: 248

List Price: £19.99

How does our body reveal us to ourselves? The body con inform the work we do in mental health. This unique collection invites the reader to consider the way we think about the embodied mind, and how it can inform both our lives and our work in psychotherapy and counselling. The body is viewed as integral to the mind in this book and in the approaches illustrated in it. Instead of splitting off the body and treating the patient as a body with a mind, contributors from a variety of approaches ask the redder to consider how we might be with, and work with, ‘bodymind’ as an interrelated whole.

Subjects covered include: The application of affective neuroscience to life well as to clinical issues; The body in psychotherapy with a person who is facing death;  The history, significance and scope of body psychotherapy today;  Psychoanalytic approaches to working with the embodied mind; Authentic Movement groups in the development of well-being in our ‘bodymindspirit’; The body and spirituality.

This book is unique in its pluralism: it includes a wide range of differing views of the importance of the body in psychotherapy, both in theory and in practice, and it relates these to the latest discussions in affective neuroscience.  It will be invaluable for those working in, or studying, psychotherapy and counselling, and will also interest those working generally in the mental health field.

This book was compiled from presentations at the UKCP 2004 Professional Conference, of the same title, held in Robinson College, Cambridge, by members of the UKCP Professional Conference Committee.

Contributions are from: Jaak Panksepp (Professor at Washington State University and author of Affective Neuroscience); Susie Orbach (Founder of the Women Therapy Centre, London); Gerda Boyesen (founder of Biodynamic Psychology); Roz Carroll (UK Chiron Body-Psychotherapist & author); Jenny Corrigal (UKCP); Claudia Herbert (founder of the Oxford Development Centre); Phil Mollon (author of EMDR and the Energy Therapies: Psychoanalytic Perspectives); Helen Payne (author of Dance Movement Therapy; editor of Body, Dance & Movement in Psychotherapy); Joy Schaverien (Jungian Analyst & Trainer); Maura Sills (Co-founder of the Karuna Institute); Michael Soth (UK Chiron Body-Psychotherapist); Heward Wilkinson (UKCP); Courtenay Young (EABP President 2002-6); Beverley Zabriskie (US Jungian Analyst).

We would welcome a review of this book.