Talking Bodies: A New Vision of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT When viewed through the lens of embodiment the traditional psychoanalytic concepts of repression/dissociation, transference, resistance, and interpretation are radically transformed. Drawing on the writings of Merleau-Ponty and Lakoff and Johnson, the authors suggest replacing concept-based psychoanalytic language with body-based words and phrases and present a new approach to describing clinical material. They offer a fresh understanding of the widely accepted “dissociation-enactment” model and a view of analytic therapy as meetings between “foreign bodies.”