The Memory of the Flesh: The Family Body in Somatic Psychology

Abstract

Family traditions take a somatic turn in a therapeutic practice that focuses on how symbolic bodies are passed down in families. Somatic psychology holds that parents offer children models of how to be in the world, which takes the form of bodily attitudes. The body shapes I imitate and resist at every stage of life arise out of the memory of the past, incarnate memory in the present, and project the memorial body towards its future. I materialize in my body the ghosts of my ancestors. This is a study of how flesh remembers.