Somatic Experience Research Articles

The Contactful Quad: An Effective Tool for Working With Trauma

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential and development of the drama triangle, the winner’s triangle, and the trauma quadrangle in trauma work and to offer a tool to help identify the roles/patterns replayed when caught in drama. This fosters moving into a more active (winner’s) space and retaining a more integrated position. The authors draw on trauma-informed practices and transactional analysis (TA). They propose that the bystander position in response to trauma can be both an internal and external process. As a tool for working with developmental trauma, the authors offer the contactful quad, which through empowerment and witness aims to support the process of decontamination and deconfusion, to aid the healing process, and to support integration of the unresolved somatic experience of trauma responses. Using clinical vignettes, the authors demonstrate the power of the Actively Courageous position of the contactful quad as an antidote to the Bystander position.

A Psychophysiological Investigation of Mechanisms Underlying "Feeling Fat" in Women With and WithoutBinge Eating.

"Feeling fat", the somatic experience of being overweight not fully explained by objective body weight, is considered to be an eating pathology maintenance factor. The traditional clinical understanding of "feeling fat" is based on the body displacement hypothesis, which suggests that negative emotions are projected onto the body and experienced as "feeling fat" in lieu of adaptive emotion regulation. A more recent theory suggests that "feeling fat" occurs in response to thought-shape fusion (TSF), a cognitive distortion in response to the imagined consumption of perceived fattening food. The present experimental study compared the roles of these two proposed mechanisms of "feeling fat" using self-report and psychophysiological measures. Eighty-two women (41 with binge eating, 41 control participants) self-reported "feeling fat" and had their heart rate variability (HRV), a physiological index of emotion regulation, measured before and after imagined inductions. Participants imagined either a personalized negative affective experience or consuming a preferred, so-called 'fattening' food. The TSF induction increased self-reports of "feeling fat" among participants with binge eating but not among control women. The negative affect induction did not increase self-reported "feeling fat" in either group. HRV did not significantly change in response to either induction for either group. TSF may be a more potent precursor to "feeling fat" than negative affect for individuals with binge eating. This may suggest new treatment directions, such as cognitive defusion from TSF when patients experience "feeling fat." The utility of HRV in monitoring "feeling fat" is questionable.

Response styles to positive affect during a positive psychology intervention for veterans with PTSD and moral injury: Preliminary results from a moral elevation intervention pilot trial.

Veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or moral injury are at risk of maladaptive response styles to positive emotions, such as emotional numbing. A potential pathway to target problematic responses to positive affect is a positive psychology intervention that elicits moral elevation-feeling inspired after witnessing someone perform a virtuous act. This study aims to examine responses to positive affect in a pilot trial of a web-based moral elevation intervention titled, MOVED: Moral Elevation Online Intervention for Veterans Experiencing Distress Related to PTSD and Moral Injury. Method: Veterans who reported moral injury distress and probable PTSD were randomized into an intervention or control condition (n = 48). We examined repeated measures data during the trial and focused on three subscales of the Response to Positive Affect Questionnaire: rumination on positive mood and somatic experiences (emotion-focus), rumination on positive aspects of the self and pursuit of relevant goals (self-focus), and efforts to dampen positive moods (dampening). Three multilevel models were fitted with time and condition as predictors and subscale scores as outcomes. Qualitative data reported at intervention sessions was also reviewed and coded based on the three subscales. Veterans in the MOVED condition reported more positive rumination than the control condition for both emotion-focus (b = 2.70, p = .023) and self-focus styles (b = 2.90, p = .003). There was no group difference in the dampening style. Qualitative responses after elevation-eliciting exercises and session-based goals were most frequently coded as including emotion-focused positive rumination, followed by dampening, then self-focused rumination. These results provide preliminary evidence that a moral elevation intervention might contribute to positive responses to positive affect in a sample predisposed to emotional numbing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

When the body speaks: A case discussion of bodily manifestations of introjection and identification with the aggressor

This paper provides an analysis of the patient’s somatic experiences and fantasies during the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of childhood relational trauma. Somatizations and enactments pertaining to childhood traumas are discussed as they expressed aspects of early stigmatizations, social bullying, and parental boundary violations. A central persecutory theme of impending death during the Covid pandemic is discussed as it revealed previously unspeakable persecutory fears. Obsessional somatic preoccupations and fantasies expressed the patient’s sense of inescapable condemnation and annihilation, which in turn portrayed the patient’s fear of parental homicidal wishes toward the patient. Key aspects of this treatment also concerned an analysis of self-endangerment and suicidality as a defensive process of identification with the aggressor. Somatic aspects of transference and countertransference phenomena are explored as an integral part of the analysis. A discussion of the case material with two psychoanalyst colleagues is included.

Phenomenology of Somatization in Immigrants: An Idealtypical Approach

Introduction: Somatization in immigrants is frequent but standard studies do not differentiate between various forms of somatization. In this qualitative study, we used an idealtypical approach with the aim of phenomenologically differentiating between different forms of somatization in immigrants. Methods: The clinical description of the ideal types was based on seven levels: medical examination; description of somatization symptoms; the patients’ own interpretation of their somatic experience; concomitant psychopathological phenomena; genetic understanding; clinician’s interpretation; and course and treatment. Results: Five different ideal typologies of patients emerged: anxious hypochondriasis, somatization with cultural features playing a pathogenetic role, culturally shaped somatization (through pathoplastic effects), somatization as part of adjustment reactions due to migratory living difficulties, and somatization as post-traumatic reaction. Conclusion: These differences are useful to highlight the complex interrelationship between socioeconomic, migratory, cultural, and value factors in the construction of somatization among immigrants. Implications for research methodology, nosology, clinical management, and organization of medical facilities are also discussed.

Altered States of Consciousness are Prevalent and Insufficiently Supported Clinically: A Population Survey

ObjectivesAdoption of potentially consciousness-altering practices may be leading to a rise in emergent phenomena (EP): sudden unusual mental or somatic experiences often interpreted as spiritual, mystical, energetic, or magical in nature. It is unclear how frequently these altered states of consciousness occur and what the clinical implications may be. Anecdotal accounts and prior literature suggest that EP may be common, under-reported, and followed by either positive or negative changes to well-being. We sought to supplement prior evidence on the prevalence and effects of EP among general populations with large-scale quantitative measurements.MethodWe measured the prevalence of EP, while not on mind-altering substances, through completion of online surveys by representative samples from three international communities (n = 3135). The communities sampled were UK Qualtrics online panelists, US-based MTurk workers, and the readers of a popular rationalist blog. Samples were broadly representative of underlying populations.ResultsForty-five percent of participants reported experiencing non-pharmacologically induced EP at least once in their lives, including derealization (17%), unitive experiences (15%), ecstatic thrills (15%), vivid perceptions (11%), changes in perceived size (10%), bodily heat or electricity (9%), out-of-body experiences (8%), and perception of non-physical lights (5%). Respondents reported a mix of positive and negative well-being outcomes following EP, with 13% claiming moderate or greater suffering and 1.1% claiming life-threatening suffering. Of those who experienced suffering, 63% did not seek help.ConclusionsEP are widespread among the studied populations with potential for both positive and negative outcomes, the latter of which do not appear to be adequately addressed through recourse to clinical practice.

Coming to Grips With Benign Prostate Enlargement or Prostate Cancer in Contemporary Japan: Readings From a Cancer-Self.

This article explores how a group of 35 Japanese men comprehend and verbalize the somatic experience embedded in dealing with benign prostate enlargement, or disquiet/discomfort of developing prostate cancer. Grounded in an adaptation of the sexual scripts theorizing, a set of in-depth, semistructured individual interviews were conducted through a LINE-app videocall from 2021 to 2023. Outcomes of interview were analyzed through a conversational approach, and presented by using three axes: the body, gender, and sexuality. An understanding of the Japanese-civilized-self has rendered somatic knowing problematic and pretended ignorance a strategy to deal with conversations about a condition involving the genitals and body waste. The body refers to a cancer-self who copes with ignorance of the prostate's anatomy and physiology, the-mechanics-of-urine, and medication/treatment side-effects. Gender is concerned with a cancer-self who grapples with an ailment that "emasculates the self," and the feminization of care as well as infantilization at medical facilities. Sexuality implies a cancer-self who bears scripts related to asexuality, medication/treatments that affect libido and penile erections, and a tarnished sexual reputation as a "heterosexual man" because prostate stimulation has been associate with homosexuality.

Extraordinary Bodies, Invisible Worlds

Numerous scholars have signalled that neo-pagan practitioners use their body and their senses to interact with the divine and elaborate a spiritual experience. However, the learning process followed to achieve and produce a sensing body capable of communicating with summoned entities has not been properly assessed, until very recently. For over a decade, I have conducted ethnographic research on neo-pagan ritual practices held at European megalithic sites to understand how practitioners learn to co-construct their somatic experiences culturally. Collected data allowed me to develop a model I called somatic pedagogy, which is a progressive sensory learning process applied by ritual specialists organizing practices. In this review article, I present a synthesis of published material where I have developed this model extensively. Specifically, I will go through the elements that permit this kind of somatic education to be implemented within analysed practices: the specificities of neo-pagan ontologies about the human body and world, the potential of neo-pagan rituals to function as learning sites, and the main stages of this progressive bodily education

Making sense: towards a unified theory of art psychotherapy through the formulation of an aesthetic grid

ABSTRACT In this paper, I discuss how ‘sense’ is made in art therapy regarding three uses of the term: that of ‘meaning’, ‘somatic experience’ and the capacity for ‘sensing’. I suggest that the patient in an art therapy session produces actions and artefacts which come into contact with the mind of the therapist/group. This allows for a dream to be generated between the creator and the observer, that the artwork can tell us something about internal mental states within the creator. I propose a theory of observation by application of an Aesthetic Grid – an adaptation of Bion’s Grid of genetic epistemology. This is an attempt to bring together ‘three waves of art therapy theory and practice’, and incorporates the function of the art object, as well as the phases of art making and looking/talking. The Aesthetic Grid is not intended for use in sessions but rather to be utilized after the event, in order to reflect upon the status of the ‘art-psychotherapy object’ - the totality of the triangular relationship, creator-artwork-viewer, and whether this constitutes development and growth or its inverse.

‘Tarmacking is tedious': navigating city pressures in Nakuru, Kenya

This article delves into the multifaceted concept of tarmacking to analyse urban pressure as experienced in Nakuru, a secondary city in Kenya. It presents Tarmacking as a deeply sensorial and experiential understanding of city navigation underscoring the material and immaterial strategies that hustling urban dwellers employ to chart their way through the city and through life, capitalizing on opportunities while avoiding to succumb to the pressures this navigation entails. Tarmacking is part of what I present as Nakuru’s urban kinaesthetics. My analysis ultimately highlights insights about the life trajectories of young men, hustle economies, social navigation and concurring forms of pressure in the corporealities, materialities and mobilities that constitute the emergent fabric of Nakuru, offering a richer understanding of the somatic experiences of urban pressure and the strategies employed to counter them.

0932 Comparison of Language and Somatic Experiences Between Reports of Trauma & Trauma-Related Dreams

0932 Comparison of Language and Somatic Experiences Between Reports of Trauma & Trauma-Related Dreams

Exploring Embodied and Bioenergetic Approaches in Trauma Therapy: Observing Somatic Experience and Olfactory Memory.

Recent studies highlight how body psychotherapy is becoming highly cited, especially in connection with studies on trauma-related disorders. This review highlights the theoretical assumptions and recent points in common with embodied simulation and new sensory theories by integrating bioenergetic analysis, embodiment, and olfactory memory in trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) therapy. Embodied memory, rooted in sensorimotor experiences, shapes cognitive functions and emotional responses. Trauma, embodied in somatic experiences, disrupts these processes, leading to symptoms such as chronic pain and dissociation. The literature discussed highlights the impact of burning odors on individuals with PTSD and those who have experienced childhood maltreatment. Burning odors can increase stress and heart rate in war veterans, with sensitivity to these odors intensifying over time since the trauma. Additionally, adults who experienced childhood maltreatment exhibit faster processing of unpleasant odors and increased symptom severity. Grounding techniques, such as adopting a balanced posture, enhance breathing and sensory capabilities, potentially aiding in managing symptoms associated with trauma-related disorders such as PTSD.

Chronic Pain in Autistic Youth: Clinical Prevalence and Reflections on Tailoring Evidence-Based Interventions from an Interdisciplinary Treatment Team.

Though there is growing awareness of the overrepresentation of autistic patients in chronic pain clinics, potential adaptations for the assessment and treatment of chronic pain in this population have not yet been established. To address this gap, a retrospective review of electronic medical records and discussions by an interdisciplinary pain treatment team were summarized to inform potential biopsychosocial factors affecting the presentation, assessment, and treatment of chronic pain in autistic youth. Our sample included a record review of 95 patients receiving treatment in an interdisciplinary outpatient pediatric pain clinic. Results indicated that 9% (n = 9) of the patients presented to the clinic with a prior diagnosis of autism, but an additional 21% (n = 20) were identified as likely meeting criteria for autism based on the clinical assessment of the developmental history, behaviors observed during the clinical encounter(s), and expert clinical judgment, suggesting that the prevalence rate of autism may be closer to 30% in our outpatient pediatric pain clinic. Over half (52%) of the autistic youth presented to the clinic with widespread pain, 60% identified as female, and 6% identified as gender expansive or transgender. Qualitative insights revealed that most of the autistic patients had co-occurring sensory-processing challenges and difficulty in describing their pain, emotions, and somatic experiences and exhibited cognitive inflexibility and social challenges. We summarize our team's clinical reflections on how autism-relevant biopsychosocial vulnerability factors may contribute to the experience of pain in autistic youth and propose treatment targets and adaptations for the assessment and treatment of pain in this population. Finally, we recommend the need for interventions focused on sensorimotor integration, especially for autistic youth, and describe how pain clinics may be particularly helpful for identifying and supporting autistic females, for whom the potential role of autism in pain experiences had not been considered until receiving treatment in our clinic.

Development and validation of a brain fog scale for coeliac disease.

Brain fog is a subjective cognitive impairment commonly reported in coeliac disease. A standardised tool to define and assess it is an important unmet need. To develop a patient-informed tool to assess brain fog in coeliac disease to support clinical care, research and drug development. A pilot online study defined patient descriptors of brain fog. A second study evaluated the factor structure and performance of the scale across two-time points ('Now' and in the 'Past week'). One month later, participants were invited to repeat the study with two online cognitive processing tests, the Stroop task and the trail making test. Among adults with treated coeliac disease, 37 (91.9% F) participated in the pilot study and 510 (88.8% F) in the second study of whom 99 repeated the study 1 month later with 51 completing cognitive testing. The most common brain fog descriptors were 'difficulty focusing', 'difficulty thinking' and 'difficulty finding the right words and communicating'. The 12-item scale reflects 'cognitive impairment' and 'somatic and affective experience' and demonstrates strong psychometric properties. It tracked with patients report of brain fog being present or absent across two-time points. It did not significantly correlate with the cognitive tests. The brain fog assessment and severity scale is the first patient-informed clinical outcomes assessment tool measuring brain fog in coeliac disease. It is brief and validated for two time-based formats. Further research coupling it with biomarker discovery is needed to confirm its validity as a predictor of cognitive performance.

Meditations on the Female Chronic Pain Experience in Literature: An Exploration of Lupus in Flannery O’Connor’s Letters

“Men are more likely than women to be given medication when they report pain to their doctors. Women are more likely to be given sedatives,” claims Leslie Jamison while citing evidence from the 2001 study The Girl Who Cried Pain (Jamison 117). Pain as an experiential category is different from other somatic experiences, in that it is heavily dependent not only on its mitigation but also on its avowal of external perceptual forces. As Elaine Scarry puts it “To have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt” (Scarry 7). This is true except in circumstances when one is inflicting pain on another – such as torture, where the other’s articulation of pain reinforces the effectiveness of pain being inflicted. 
 A close look at the existing theoretical apparatus and literary representations of women’s physical pain reveals a big issue. Even when gender is acknowledged as a contributing factor in women’s pain, these conversations are often limited to representations of descriptions of sexual assault, childbirth and, fairly recently, menstruation.
 The experiences of female pain that aren’t solely mediated through the genitalia, lack both representation and a theoretical vocabulary to talk about them productively. My engagement with pain as a symptom of lupus shows that there are experiences of pain heavily dependent on gender identity, which have nothing to do with the genitalia. In establishing a theoretical apparatus for talking about such experiences it might be useful to draw on Flannery O’Connor’s letters as a test for the theoretical apparatus thus developed.

Virtual agents among participants with methamphetamine use disorders: Acceptability and usability study.

While the potential future role of virtual agents (VAs) in treating addiction is promising, participants' attitudes toward the use of VAs in psychotherapy remain insufficiently investigated. This lack of investigation could pose barriers to the adoption of VA-led psychotherapy for people with substance use disorders (SUD). This research aims to explore the acceptability and usability of VAs for people with methamphetamine use disorder. Following a single session of psychotherapy led by VAs through the Echo-app, a group of 49 individuals actively seeking treatment for current DSM-V substance dependence (with a mean age of 39.06 ± 8.02) completed self-administered questionnaires and participated in focus group interviews. These questionnaires aimed to investigate participants' preference regarding the type of psychotherapy and their willingness to engage in VA-led psychotherapy, taking into account their diverse psychological needs. Quantitative data were subjected to analysis through both descriptive and inferential statistical methods. Interestingly, participants exhibited a significantly higher acceptability for traditional face-to-face psychotherapy compared to email-based psychotherapy (p = 0.042), but there was no statistically significant difference between their acceptance of traditional psychotherapy and VA-led psychotherapy (p = 0.059). The questionnaire outcomes indicated participants' willingness to engage in VA-led psychotherapy for purposes such as relapse prevention intervention, addressing emotional issues, managing somatic experiences, and facilitating social and family functional recovery. Furthermore, the participants' attitudes toward VA-led psychotherapy were predicted by factors including the need for anxiety-focused psychotherapy (p = 0.027; OR [95%CI] = 0.14[0.03,0.80]), the presence of chronic somatic diseases (p = 0.017; OR [95%CI] = 13.58[1.59,116.03]), and marital status (p = 0.031; OR [95%CI] = 5.02[1.16,21.79]). Through the interviews, the study uncovered the factors that either supported or hindered participants' experiences with VA-led psychotherapy, while also gathering suggestions for future improvements. This research highlights the willingness and practicality of individuals with SUD in embracing VA-led psychotherapy. The findings are anticipated to contribute to the refinement of VA-led tools to better align with the preferences and needs of the users.

Jean-Luc Nancy: przyjemność (w) dekonstrukcji

The article deals primarily with the concept of pleasure in Jean-Luc Nancy’s thought. It occurs in many texts by the philosopher and connects with key concepts of his deconstructive project: the body, relational ontology and the writing. For Nancy, pleasure is, among other things, a particular somatic experience, the effect of peculiar writing practice, and finally, the experience of non-identity of a singular plural subject. The distinctive feature of pleasure (in various conceptualizations) is the opening that it makes every time, which Nancy derives from his deconstructive considerations on the works of Freud, Kant and Barthes. In the thesis, Nancy’s revised concept of pleasure as an opening is also referenced to Derrida’s thought in order to analyse the general relations between pleasure and deconstruction and to consider how deconstruction can be a source of pleasure.

Echolation as Modulation: A Case Study of Chus Pato and Erín Moure’s Secession/Insecession, Accompanied by a Fan Fiction of Moure’s Work More Generally

ABSTRACT This article takes a creative-critical approach to reading Erín Moure’s Secession/Insecession, a translation and echolation of Chus Pato Secesión, originally written in Galician. It subversively adopts the different species of Jean Vinay and Jean-Paul Darbelnet’s procedure of modulation from their 1958 comparative treatise Stylistique Comparée du français et de l’anglais to look at the way translator’s voice, somatic experience and political situation are shifted in Moure’s translation and creative rewriting. Across the different species of modulation, it charts the way that Moure’s echolation is a metacommentary as well as an archive of her translational experience and upon translation itself, modulating author with translator, writing with translation, but also modulating time and space between Pato’s realities and her own. Woven throughout these readings are connections to Moure’s work as a whole, in particular to the provocative heteronymic figure of Elisa Sampedrín, her intertextuality and translation techniques, and how they tell another story for translation. Finally, the body of the article is interrupted with prose-poetical passages in French that carry this reflection into the fan-fictional.

From geopolitics and regional identity to geopoetics and self-identification – a trajectory of conceptualization of Central Europe?

The article problematizes the discourse on Central Europe following a trajectory from the twentieth-century geopolitics and region-building projects founded on identity politics to the contemporary geopoetics and literary self-identifications shaped in relation to place and time. Emphasis is put on the second geopoetic, literary pole which is nourished by negative categories and is composed of particular articulations of being a Central European shaped in time of historical discontinuities and crises. Methodologically the paper is framed by the interdisciplinary sensory studies. The article addresses several contemporary writers’ self-identifications (Andrzej Stasiuk, Robert Makłowicz, Drago Jančar) founded on “autobiographical sites” which give insight into shared articulations of certain elements of Central European myth (problematic identity, spatial in-betweenness and feeling of transience, idealized Habsburg Monarchy). Furthermore, the instances of reconfiguration of this myth are presented by paying attention to the role of somatic experience shaping sensuous topographies of Central Europe which reconfigure the region's imagined spatial coordinates by replacing the horizontal dichotomy of the desired western culture and rejected eastern politics with the vertical paradigm of southern and northern vectors. Has Central Europe present in contemporary twenty-first century literary representations replaced the twentieth-century Cold-War West-East geopolitical in-betweenness with the geopoetic meridian points of reference?

Marking the moment: Documenting dance in coloured water, flesh, sand and charcoal

This article discusses interdisciplinary methods for recalling and documenting the somatic knowledges derived from movement (such as dance movement). The article explores the research-as-practice interdisciplinary activity of Concrete-Water-Flesh at Deptford, a set of three structured improvisational dance scores carried out on the sand by the River Thames at Deptford, United Kingdom in 2020 and 2021. During Concrete-Water-Flesh at Deptford, I, Helen Kindred and some fellow dancers (forming DancingStrong Movement Lab Company) moved across the sand at the river’s edge, while fine artists (including Andrew Hinton, Mary Rodriguez and Nina Anderson) moved across paper, drawing us using elements from the shore (the sandy sludge, charcoal from burnt beach debris, and water). In the moment of dance, the marks of our movements (such as on sand or on paper) offered a documentation of the somatic experience of Concrete-Water-Flesh at Deptford. I suggest the collaboration of Concrete-Water-Flesh at Deptford raises possibilities for, and further questions about, documenting and languaging the embodied.