Written in the body. I. Working through traumatic memories by means of re-enactment phototherapy

Abstract

Re-enactment phototherapy (Martin, 2001; Martin & Spence, 1985) belongs to the group of psychotherapeutic techniques that attempt to shortcut the defensive verbal layers of rationalization, confabulation, proscription, prohibition, or outright denial. Instead, they focus on the story that the body has to tell. If these are to be accepted as valid treatment methods within the therapeutic community, it is essential that they aim at integrating pre- and nonverbal bodily sensations and emotional expressions with symbolic and verbal levels of representation, in order to create a cognitively coherent understanding of the therapeutic process itself. Re-enactment phototherapy is a powerful and potentially transformative method, which should be handled with utmost care in a safe professional setting. In re-enactment phototherapy, the exploration of personal history takes the form of staging past episodes of interacting with significant others, somewhat alike to psychodrama, but focusing more on visual aspects of role-taking, and recording the re-enactment photographically. The integration is accomplished by reflection on the experience itself and on the captured photographic images of the event, which form a poignant and expressive permanent record. This article exemplifies such an exploration of early traumatic memories by presenting an excerpt from a case study, and discusses the implications of the therapeutic process from the points of view of trauma theory, mentalisation theory, and the works of Freud, Lacan, and Matte Blanco.