Embodied Psychoanalysis

A practical and reflective guide for analysts seeking to deepen their understanding of the interrelation between body, mind, and the intersubjective relationship. Weaving together theory and clinical insight, international scholars explore how the human mind is built from the earliest experiences of affective attunement and sensory contact.

With contributions from Antonello Correale, Giuseppe Craparo, Vincenzo David, Alessandra Lemma, Clara Mucci, Georg Northoff, Andrea Scalabrini, and Allan N. Schore.

Before words exist, it is gestures, gazes, and bodily resonances that give rise to a sense of self. From these first encounters emerges a web of memory and meaning that accompanies psychic life, often beyond the reach of conscious awareness. When such bonds are interrupted or traumatised, suffering no longer finds expression through language but becomes embodied – in the body itself, in symptoms, in silence. To understand and to heal these states means learning to listen to the living matter of experience, to the pre-verbal forms through which the mind communicates.

In the therapeutic field, this approach calls for a new way of being in relation. The analytic word gives way to the listening of rhythm, breath, and the emotional movement that flows between patient and analyst. The body becomes not only an object of inquiry, but also an instrument of encounter and transformation. The image that emerges is that of an embodied psyche, one that is always born in relation: there is no mind without the body, nor self without another with whom to resonate. To rediscover this truth is to restore to psychoanalysis and to the unconscious its most vital and original dimension – that of a science of the human, rooted in the living experience of bodies, emotions, sexuality, and shared presence.

Table of Contents

About the editors and contributors

Introduction

 1. The interpersonal neurobiology of intersubjectivity: Recent advances in research, theory, and practice
Allan N. Schore

2. The bodily intero-exteroceptive self: Development of a psychological secure baseline
Andrea Scalabrini, Clara Mucci, and Georg Northoff

3. This body which is not one: Dual or multiple bodies psychology. From Freud’s drives and the repression of the M/Other to the birth of the multiple others in psychoanalysis
Clara Mucci

4. Images and sensoriality: Images as a path to the sensoriality of the self and of others
Antonello Correale

5. This unconscious which is not one: The neurobiology and neuroscience of the dual body unconscious, from Freud to Ferenczi to Schore
Clara Mucci

6. Unrepressed unconscious: A developmental–relational approach
Giuseppe Craparo

7. From the Safety Principle to the Pleasure Principle
Giuseppe Craparo

8. Interpersonal trauma, borderline bodies, and sexual identity diffusion
Clara Mucci

9. An embodied conceptualisation of enactment
Giuseppe Craparo and Vincenzo David

10. The body of the analyst and the analytic setting: Reflections on the embodied setting and the symbiotic transference
Alessandra Lemma

Index

• Edited by Giuseppe Craparo
• Edited by Clara Mucci

‘In recent years, research in the psychoanalytic field has begun to explore the multiplicity of unconscious systems, drawing – as demonstrated by this book – on Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id. In this exploration, psychoanalysis has engaged with infant research and neurobiology, as highlighted in the book’s chapters, all of which are outstanding and of great interest in their clinical and psychopathological implications for the professionals in the area of mental health. The theoretical thread that connects these contributions is that of implicit or enactive relationality, in which mind and body meet and intertwine.’

— Massimo Ammaniti, Psychoanalyst and Honorary Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, Sapienza University of Rome

‘Psychoanalytic attention to the human body has a chequered history. It ranges from the insistent primacy of body over mind and culture (à la Freud’s “anatomy is destiny”) through novel, if occasionally questionable, somatic interventions to almost total neglect of corporeal existence in the enthusiasm over psychic intersubjectivity and social constructivism. Giuseppe Craparo and Clara Mucci’s book side-steps such pitfalls. Instead, it offers a thoughtful, theoretically modern, body-oriented view not only of instincts, drives, and sensuality, but also of identity diffusion, countertransference, and role-responsive enactments in the clinical setting. This is a most useful addition to today’s psychoanalytic literature.’

— Salman Akhtar, MD, DLFAPA, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College; Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia

‘Embodied Psychoanalysis is a landmark volume that unites psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and trauma studies. Bringing together leading voices, it demonstrates how the body shapes selfhood, relationships, and the therapeutic process. A vital resource for clinicians and scholars, it offers an integrative and transformative perspective on the unconscious and healing.’

— Stephen W. Porges, PhD, Distinguished University Scientist; Founding Director, Kinsey Institute Traumatic Stress Research Consortium; Professor of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill