Winnicott's Mindpsyche and its treatment

Abstract

This paper presents Winnicott's concept of Mindpsyche and two clinical examples of how the concept is applied in two treatment modalities. First, a discussion among the members and leader of a dance therapy group is presented, in which participants attempt to understand why certain moments in the dance experience feel both frightening and exciting for them. They specify that these moments have to do with improvising in such a way as to generate a certain level of arousal which produces a momentary integration of feelings, thoughts and behavior, and with being seen at such moments. The author suggests that these experiences of embodiment suggest a solution to the problem of Mindpsyche, which is a state in which the soma has been drawn into the mind, depriving the individual of the natural process of mutual interrelation between psyche and soma. Moments of embodiment can be perceived not only by the dancer, but by others who witness the dance. Yet it may be impossible to specify what is unique to the outward manifestations (the real actions) of these dances that demonstrates their embodiment. The first example of embodiment is from Gendlin's Experiential Focusing. The dance therapist may be in a particularly advantageous position regarding work with problems of mindpsyche. In the second example, three moments of treatment are presented, in which a bulimic patient who is “in her head” learns how to establish a mutual interrelation between certain movement cues and breathing to generate momentary states of embodiment.