The body and the consulting room's materiality as a path for developing intersubjective psychophysical space

Abstract

ABSTRACT The paper explores the therapeutic importance of some structural aspects of the body and the consulting room for integrating primal psychophysical spatiality with children suffering from severe developmental deficiency (mainly autism, but not exclusively). The dominant dimension of those children available for the therapist is their non-communicative corporal organisation and behavioural involvement with physical aspects of the consulting room. The paper introduces the idea of ‘an envelope with openings’, seeing it as an innate multidimensional psychophysical schema. Such a structure fits with the child and the therapist’s body, and characterises the physical aspects of the consulting room. This structural resemblance has the potential of functioning as an intuitive pre-reflective common source for therapeutic communication. It might support the therapist’s somatic openness, crystallise into a countertransference-based corporal communication, functioning as a ‘constitutive intervention’, and thus give organised existence to the primal layer of the child’s experience. This type of intervention invites the therapist to use his body and/or some physical aspect of the room to structure fragmented psychophysical elements into this spatial-temporal embodied schema. Clinical case material from two therapies with children with ASD, and one adult therapy, illustrate this potential, gradually revealing the consulting room as a goldmine inhabited by subjective objects, ready for intersubjective meaning.