Frances Sommer Anderson

Bodies in Treatment is a challenging volume that brings into conceptual focus an "unspoken dimension" of clinical work - the body and nonverbal communication - that has long occupied the shadowy realm of tacit knowledge. By bringing visceral, sensory, and imagistic modes of emotional processing to the forefront, Editor Frances Sommer Anderson and the contributors to this original collection expand the domain of psychodynamic engagement. Working at the leading edge of psychoanalytic theory and practice, and in the forefront of the integrative psychotherapy movement, Anderson has created a collaborative project that stimulates interdisciplinary dialogue on the developmental neurobiology of attachment, the micro-processing of interchanges between the infant and caregiver, the neuroscience of emotional processing and trauma, body-focused talking treatments for trauma, and research in cognitive science. Enlightened by experiencing body-based treatments for thirty years, Anderson reflects on the powerful impact of these interventions, recounting attempts to integrate her somatically-informed discoveries into the "talking" frame. Reaching further, her contributors present richly informative accounts of how experiences in body-based modalities can be creatively integrated into a psychoanalytic framework of treatment. Readers are introduced to specialized modalities, such as craniosacral therapy and polarity therapy, as well as to the adjunctive use of yoga, the effectiveness of which can be grounded neurophysiologically. Somatic interventions are discussed in terms of the extent to which they can promote depth-psychological change outside the psychoanalytic consulting room as well as how they can enrich the relational process in psychodynamic treatment. The final sections of Bodies in Treatment explore the range of ways in which patients’ and therapists’ bodies engage, sustain, and contain the dynamics of treatment.

The Unspoken Dimension

Bodies In Treatment

Lewis Aron

Contemporary psychoanalysis has devoted so much of its attention to 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 in exemplary fashion. 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 that are seldom addressed in the clinical literature, including breast cancer in the analyst, psychoanalytic treatment of Munchausen's Syndrome, physical deformity, and musculoskeletal back pain. The final three chapters, by Looker, Balamuth, and Anderson, respectively, grew out of a study group that continues to investigate the relationship between somatic and symbolized experience. The editors are well equipped to undertake this project. Lewis Aron is a leading relational theorist and clinical analyst, and Frances Sommer Anderson has employed a psychoanalytically informed approach to treating musculoskeletal back pain and other somatic symptoms for 18 years. The editors have enlisted original contributions from an excellent group of colleagues, placing Relational Perspectives on the Body at the forefront of the revival of interest in the body and bodily experience in psychoanalytic theory and practice.

Relational Perspectives on the Body

Eric Sherman

Pathways to Pain Relief is based upon the pioneering work of John E. Sarno, MD, Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Sarno has advanced the idea that a wide variety of pain disorders are psychophysiologic in origin. Psychophysiologic disorders, previously referred to as psychosomatic disorders, are just one aspect of the recently energized field of mindbody medicine.What distinguishes Pathways to Pain Relief is that it embraces the position that musculoskeletal pain and other psychophysiologic disorders can originate from psychological experiences as a means to protect an individual from unbearable emotional distress.Psychotherapeutic techniques based on the medicalization of musculoskeletal pain foreclose the possibility of approaching these conditions as a psychophysiologic disorder. The medicalization paradigm prevents many clinicians from recognizing that the same emotional conflicts which lead to psychological symptoms can initiate the development of physical symptoms as well. Pathways to Pain Relief provides details on how treatment has worked from the patient's and the therapist's point of view.The authors, Dr. Frances Sommer Anderson & Dr. Eric Sherman, present clinical case material to illustrate how musculoskeletal pain and other psychophysiologic disorders can originate from psychological experiences as a means to protect an individual from unbearable emotional distress.

Frances Sommer Anderson

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