I believe that if Freud was alive today, his approach to the psyche would
be more appropriately nicknamed the 'relating cure', and that an emphasis on 'talking' would
be considered an unnecessarily restrictive view of the interaction between
client and therapist.
If it is the relationship that matters, then counselling depends on keeping
the quality of human contact alive.
That is not easy in an increasingly virtual world where global celebrities
and Hollywood images influence our conceptions of intimacy, love and the
depth of human experience. In this climate our profession is wary of having
the subjective and intersubjective mystery of relating pinned down, measured
and defined too neatly. But that does not mean that key concepts like 'quality
of relationship', 'empathy', 'transference', 'congruence' have to remain vague
and intangible notions. They can all become 'grounded' and 'gain substance' by
attending to them as body/mind processes.
What matters in relationship is not only insight, understanding and the language
of the mind. However accurate and valid these may be in themselves, they can
at times make precious little difference as long as they remain disembodied.
What matters equally is the felt, embodied, sensed experience.
All our theories, across the various approaches, suffer from a bias of mind
over matter. They all need more embodiment. All our models and concepts which
help us understand the vicissitudes and complexities of the relationship, need
to be re-thought, revised and re-visioned as body/mind processes.
Bringing the whole body/mind to the therapeutic encounter
There is no such thing as a mental or psychological process that is not also
manifest on a somatic (biological, physiological, muscular) level. There is
no emotional repression or dissociation that is not reflected in a corresponding
process of repression or dissociation somewhere within the body/mind. There
is no intersubjective contact or relational rupture that is not also an experience
of embodiment or disembodiment.
Our words and our thinking, our reflection, cognition and language can be
avenues into a deeper experience of ourselves, or they can be used to intellectualise
and distract.
Our feelings and actions, our spontaneity and physicality can be avenues into
a full expression of our aliveness, or they can constitute a compulsive and
defensive acting-out.
The body can give us therapeutic access to the mind, and vice versa. For relating
to include the whole person (of both client and counsellor), we need the capacity
to fluidly move across the whole spectrum of body/mind processes. The client's
self may be experienced and communicated and need to be met on a physical,
emotional, imaginal and mental level. Our profession is still hampered in this
endeavour by funnelling all communication through an inherited and established
bias towards verbal interaction. But the depth of the client's pain as well
as their potential for transformation are largely experienced and communicated
on a non-verbal level, and the same is true for the therapeutic relationship.
We therefore need theoretical models as well as therapeutic techniques, which
can help us access and work with the full range of body/mind processes which
constitute the detail and the nitty-gritty of relating. By using role play,
this workshop will provide the beginnings of an experiential flavour of such
a way of working.
Brochure amendment
(Please note the above session is referred to as a seminar in the conference
brochure. This is an administrative error. This session is
a workshop that runs for 1 hour 30 mins)
Embodied Relationship in Psychotherapy and Counselling
Body psychotherapy reminds us that the head is part of a body, and that the
embodied nature of our existence is crucial to both our difficulties and our
possibilities. It works to repair the alienation from embodied experience which
runs through our culture - the way in which we tend to experience ourselves
as minds using 'our' bodies to carry us around, to get our needs met, to show
off our tan, to give us pleasure, to absorb our pain.
When we are grounded in bodily experience, we can feel our emotions and sensations
fully; which actually means that we can think more clearly and deeply. We can
also feel our body's deep drive for relationship - that it needs others for
its well-being. Body psychotherapy can be seen as a practice of embodied relating.
This lecture will present some of the basic principles of body psychotherapy,
and suggest how many of them can apply to all forms of therapy. In particular,
it will argue that the need for contactful relationship is a core, healthy
need, and should be supported rather than rejected by the therapist.
Embodiment and Polarities in Contemporary Body Psychotherapy
In this masterclass we will define, explore and work with embodiment and polarities
as understood in contemporary body psychotherapy.
Polarities will be used as a way of exploring vitality and disturbance as
experienced in the individuals body/mind dynamic. The class will draw upon
my work with identity issues, habitual positions, and conflicted self as experienced
in the transference and countertransference relationship. The emergent themes
of the work will be built around the practitioner's moment-to-moment awareness
of themselves and the client, and the interweaving aspects of perception, understanding
and intervention.
This masterclass will focus on the intra- and inter-personal dynamics of the
psychotherapeutic relationship for both client and practitioner.
A Q&A session on the role of embodied relationship in therapy work – how
all of us can, and need to, bring our bodies through the door of the therapy
room, and explore how they come into relationship with the client's body. This
needn't involve 'doing body psychotherapy', touching our clients, etc. I'll
be suggesting that it is a fundamental requirement for all good therapy, and
trying to show how it can be done in practice, with reference to case material
of my own and material brought by the participants.
Biographies
Michael Soth
Michael Soth is an Integrative Body Psychotherapist, trainer
and supervisor (UKCP reg). He is Training Director at the Chiron Centre and
has
recently helped
found the London-based Centre for Integral-Relational Learning (www.cirl.org.uk)
which will offer training in Body Psychotherapy and Group Facilitation.
Inheriting concepts, values and ways of working from both psychoanalytic and
humanistic traditions, he is interested in the therapeutic relationship as
a body/mind process between two people who are both wounded and whole.
Recent publications include a chapter on embodied countertransference in New
dimensions in body psychotherapy and 'What therapeutic hope for a subjective
mind in an objectified body?' based on his presentation at the 2004 UKCP
conference 'About a body'. Some of his other writing is available at www.soth.co.uk.
Nick Totton
Nick Totton came into working as a therapist through a long trek which started
in political activism and passed through communal living, psychomystical exploration,
and various other attempts to understand our potential for, and difficulty
in, creating positive human lifestyles. He trained as a Reichian body psychotherapist,
and subsequently did an MA in psychoanalytic studies, as well as a number of
seminars in process work. He has written and edited several books, mainly on
psychotherapy and politics, body psychotherapy, and the paranormal in therapy;
and is editor of the journal Psychotherapy and Politics International.
Nick lives in Calderdale, and works with individuals and groups. He is a member
of Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility, and in a member
group of the Independent Practitioners Network.
Joanne Ablack
Joanne Ablack is the Director of the Centre for Integral-Relational Learning.
She is a UKCP Integrative Body Psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor in private
and organisational practice. Joanne was a staff member of the Chiron Centre
for Body Psychotherapy for six years. She is a visiting tutor and/or supervisor
on several masters programmes and also teaches abroad. Joanne is well known
for her teaching and work in approaches to working with diversity, body psychotherapy
practice, and working with somatic trauma. She has provided a training, consultancy
and supervision service to organisations and groups for the past 20 years.
Joanne is a former Chair of the Association of Chiron Psychotherapists, sits
as a representative in the HIPS section of the UKCP and is a member of the
UKCP Registration Board.
