Speaking of Bodies: Embodied Therapeutic Dialogues

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While the body has received significant attention in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the last couple of decades, this still focused primarily on the body of pathology - the body as speaking for (or on behalf of) the mind. Here, leading psychoanalysts and psychotherapists join with experts whose field is the body to examine and celebrate generative, creative, vital, and irreducible aspects of our embodiment.

The book is divided into seven themes, each including a chapter by a therapist and another by a specialist pondering various aspects of the body. Fashion journalists speak with a relational psychotherapist about beauty, a chef discusses sensuality with a couple therapist, and a Rabbi and a psychoanalyst speak of divinity and the body. This is a book aimed at igniting our imagination and faith in the possibility of living a full embodied life, and of integrating such practices within therapeutic and psychoanalytic work.

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The Real and the Body - Vicente Palomera

Seminar Series: 
“The Speaking Body is Today’s Unconscious. Psychoanalysis in the 21st Century”

Listen here: Vicente Palomera – The Real and the Body


The MA Psychoanalysis at Kingston University, and the London Graduate School in collaboration with Art and Philosophy at Central Saint Martins. 
 

The Symbolic and the Body - Marie Hélène Brousse

Seminar Series: 

“The Speaking Body is Today’s Unconscious. Psychoanalysis in the 21st Century”

Seminar Series presented by the MA Psychoanalysis at Kingston University, and the London Society–NLS in collaboration with Art and Philosophy at Central Saint Martins. On February 2nd 2016 the second meeting of the eries of seminars "The speaker's unconscious body is today. Psychoanalysis in the XXI century, was held. On this occasion the class was held by Marie Hélène Brousse who entitled his presentation "The Symbolic and the Body". It also counted on the participation of Christopher Kul-Want, Alan Rowan, Véronique Voruz and Gabriela van den Hoven.

Listen here: The Symbolic and the Body - Marie Hélène Brousse

The MA Psychoanalysis at Kingston University, and the London Graduate School in collaboration with Art and Philosophy at Central Saint Martins.

The Body and the Imaginary: The Case of Francis Bacon - Pierre-Gilles Gueguen

Seminar Series: 
“The Speaking Body is Today’s Unconscious. Psychoanalysis in the 21st Century”

Pierre-Gille Guéguen’s talk discusses the art of Francis Bacon in the context of his relationship with his ‘symptom-partner’ Georges Dyer. The talk is oriented by conceptual innovations, such as the sinthome, introduced by Lacan in his teaching in the late 1970s.

Professor Pierre-Gille Guéguen (Paris 8) is a psychoanalyst who lives and works in Paris. He is a member of the École de la Cause freudienne.

Listen here: Seminar Series: The Speaking Body is Today’s Unconscious. Psychoanalysis in the 21st Century | Radio Lacan


The MA Psychoanalysis at Kingston University, and the London Graduate School in collaboration with Art and Philosophy at Central Saint Martins. 
 

Body Image and Identity in Contemporary Societies: Psychoanalytic, Social, Cultural and Aesthetic Perspectives

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Popular interest in body image issues has grown dramatically in recent years, due to an emphasis on individual responsibility and self-determination in contemporary society as well as the seemingly limitless capacities of modern medicine; however body image as a separate field of academic inquiry is still relatively young. The contributors of Body Image and Identity in Contemporary Societies explore the complex social, political and aesthetic interconnections between body image and identity. It is an in-depth study that allows for new perspectives in the analysis of contemporary visual art and literature but also reflects on how these social constructs inform clinical treatment.

Sukhanova and Thomashoff bring together contributions from psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists and scholars in the fields of the social sciences and the humanities to explore representations of the body in literature and the arts across different times and cultures. The chapters analyse the social construction of the 'ideal' body in terms of beauty, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class and disability, from a broadly psychoanalytic perspective, and traces the mechanisms which define the role of the physical appearance in the formation of identity and the assumption of social roles.

Body Image and Identity in Contemporary Societies' unique interdisciplinary outlook aims to bridge the current gap between clinical observations and research in semiotic theory. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, art therapists, art theorists, academics in the humanities and social sciences, and those interested in an interdisciplinary approach to the issues of body image and identity.

Ekaterina Sukhanova is University Director of Academic Program Review at the City University of New York USA. She serves as Scientific Secretary of the Section for Art and Psychiatry and the Section of Art and Psychiatry of the World Psychiatric Association. She is also engaged in interdisciplinary research on cultural constructs of mental health and illness and curates exhibits of art brut as a vehicle for fighting stigma.

Hans-Otto Thomashoff was born in Germany and lives in Vienna. He is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, art historian and author of fiction and non-fiction books. He has been curator of several art exhibitions highlighting the connection between the psyche and art as well as president of the section of Art and Psychiatry of the World Psychiatric Association and advisory committee member of the Sigmund Freud Foundation, Vienna.

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Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis

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Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis queries the intersection of cultural and psychical meanings of skin in the contemporary moment as skin responds to new (and old) pressures and articulations. A variety of topics are herein addressed including the symbolic dominance of white skin, racialization, tattooing, cosmetic surgery, fabric skins, skin eruptions, second skins, the skin in self-harm, and skin as a site of psychic repair. The authors engage an array of objects and approaches from the clinical domain, literary fiction, television, film, video art, photography, fashion design, and poetry. In doing so, they highlight the situation of skin as a socially and culturally mediated exterior simultaneously negotiated at the interior or psychical level. This collection locates skin at the centre of inquiry, rather than as a jumping-off point from which to explore 'deeper' or 'thicker' issues, which tends to happen when skin is treated synecdochically as a stand-in for the body itself. Here, skin is a cultural object, and a psychical object, in its own right.

See also:

Under the Skin: A Psychoanalytic Study of Body Modification

The Productive Body

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The Productive Body asks how the human body and its labor have been expropriated and re-engineered through successive stages of capitalism; and how capitalisms transformation of the body is related to the rise of scientific psychology and social science disciplines complicit with modern regimes of control. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault cited Guéry and Deleule in order to link Marxs diagnosis of capitalism with his own critique of power/knowledge. The Productive Body brings together Marxism and theories of the body-machine for the goal of political revolution.

Under the Skin: A Psychoanalytic Study of Body Modification

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Considers the motivation behind why people pierce, tattoo, cosmetically enhance, or otherwise modify their body, from a psychoanalytic perspective. It discusses how the therapist can understand and help individuals for whom the manipulation of the body is felt to be psychically necessary, regardless of whether the process of modification causes pain.

In this book, psychoanalyst Alessandra Lemma draws on her work in the consulting room, as well as films, fiction, art and clinical research to suggest that the motivation for extensively modifying the surface of the body, and being excessively preoccupied with its appearance, comes from the persons internal world under their skin.

Topics covered include: body image disturbance; appearance anxiety; body dysmorphic disorder; the psychological function of cosmetic surgery, tattooing, piercing, and scarification.

Under the Skin provides a detailed study of the challenges posed by our embodied nature through an exploration of the unconscious phantasies that underlie the need for body modification, making it essential reading for all clinicians working with those who are preoccupied with their appearance and modify their bodies including psychotherapists, counsellors, psychiatrists and psychologists.

See also

Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis 

Somatic Experience in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: In the expressive language of the living

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The body, of both the patient and the analyst, is increasingly a focus of attention in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice, especially from a relational perspective. There is a renewed regard for the understanding of embodied experience and sexuality as essential to human vitality. However, most of the existing literature has been written by analysts with no formal training in body-centered work. In this book William Cornell draws on his experience as a body-centered psychotherapist to offer an informed blend of the two traditions, to allow psychoanalysts a deep understanding, in psychoanalytic language, of how to work with the body as an ally.

The primary focus of Somatic Experience in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy situates systematic attention to somatic experience and direct body-level intervention in the practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. It provides a close reading of the work of Wilhelm Reich, repositioning his work within a contemporary psychoanalytic frame and re-presents Winnicott’s work with a particular emphasis on the somatic foundations of his theories. William Cornell includes vivid and detailed case vignettes including accounts of his own bodily experience to fully illustrate a range of somatic attention and intervention that include verbal description of sensate experience, exploratory movement and direct physical contact.

Drawing on relevant theory and significant clinical material, Somatic Experience in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy will allow psychoanalysts an understanding of how to work with the body in their clinical practice. It will bring a fresh perspective on psychoanalytic thinking to body-centred psychotherapy where somatic experience is seen as an ally to psychic and interpersonal growth. This book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychodynamically oriented psychotherapists, transactional analysts, body-centred psychotherapists, Gestalt therapists, counsellors and students.

William Cornell maintains an independent private practice of psychotherapy and consultation in Pittsburgh, PA. He has devoted 40 years to the study and integration of psychoanalysis, neo-Reichian body therapy and transactional analysis. He is a Training and Supervising Transactional Analyst and has established an international reputation for his teaching and consultation.

The Embodied Analyst: From Freud and Reich to relationality

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The Embodied Analyst brings together the history of embodied analysis found in the work of Freud and Reich and contemporary relational analysis, particularly as influenced by infant research. By integrating the ‘old’ embodied and the ‘new’ relational traditions, the book contributes to a new clinical perspective focusing on form and process rather than content and structure – the ‘how’, rather than the ‘what’ and the ‘why’. This perspective is characterised by a focus on movement, emotional interaction and the therapists own bodily experience in the analytic encounter.

Jon Sletvold presents a user-friendly approach to embodied experience, providing the history, theory, training and practice of embodied experience and expression as a way of expanding clinical attention. Starting with a Spinozan view of the embodied mind, Part One: History of Embodied Psychoanalysis presents an overview of the history of the field in the works of Freud and Reich as well as a look at the Norwegian Character Analytic tradition . Part Two: Conceptual Framework and Clinical Guidelines explains how clinical interaction can be navigated based on the embodied concepts of subjectivity, intersubjectivity and reflexivity. Part Three: Embodied Training and Supervision presents innovative approaches to training in emotional communication inspired by the performing arts. The book ends with a consideration of the embodied analyst in the 21st century consulting room.

Capturing key aspects of a transitional movement in the development of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, The Embodied Analyst is ideal for those working and training in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.

Minding the Body: The body in psychoanalysis and beyond

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Minding the Body: The Body in Psychoanalysis and Beyond outlines the value of a psychoanalytic approach to understanding the body and its vicissitudes and for addressing these in the context of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. The chapters cover a broad but esoteric range of subjects that are not often discussed within psychoanalysis such as the function of breast augmentation surgery, the psychic origins of hair, the use made of the analyst’s toilet, transsexuality and the connection between dermatological conditions and necrophilic fantasies. The book also reaches ‘beyond the couch’ to consider the nature of reality television makeover show.

The book is based on the Alessandra Lemma’s extensive clinical experience as a psychoanalyst and psychologist working in a range of public and private health care settings with patients for whom the body is the primary presenting problem or who have made unconscious use of the body to communicate their psychic pain. Minding the Body draws on detailed clinical examples that vividly illustrate how the author approaches these clinical presentations in the consulting room and, as such, provides insights to the practicing clinician that will support their attempts at formulating patients’ difficulties psychoanalytically and for how to helps such patients. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health workers, academics and literary readers interested in the body, sexuality and gender.