ABSTRACT

How does our body reveal us to ourselves?

The body can 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 reader to consider how we might be with, and work with, ‘bodymind’ as an interrelated whole. Subjects covered include:

  • the application of affective neuroscience understandings to life as 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 wellbeing 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.

chapter 2|19 pages

The core emotional systems of the mammalian brain

The fundamental substrates of human emotions

chapter 4|13 pages

A new era for psychotherapy

Panksepp's affect model in the context of neuroscience and its implications for contemporary psychotherapy practice

chapter 5|20 pages

Contemporary approaches to the body in psychotherapy

Two psychotherapists in dialogue

chapter 6|12 pages

One hundred and fifty years on

The history, significance and scope of body psychotherapy today

chapter 7|16 pages

Implications of EMDR and energy therapies

The limits of talking therapy

chapter 10|23 pages

Healing from complex trauma

An integrative 3-systems' approach

chapter 11|19 pages

The body as container and expresser

Authentic Movement groups in the development of wellbeing in our bodymindspirit

chapter 12|18 pages

Transference and the meaning of touch

The body in psychotherapy with the client who is facing death

chapter 13|14 pages

‘In this body, a fathom long…’

Working with embodied mind and interbeing in psychotherapy

chapter 14|11 pages

When psyche meets soma

The question of incarnation