Primitive Bodily Communications in Psychotherapy

Primitive Bodily Communications explores the topic of non-verbal communication in the context of intellectual disability, eating disorders, and bodily neglect, focusing on the communicative aspect of bodily expressions within the therapeutic relationship.

With contributions from Gabrielle Brown, William F. Cornell, Raffaella Hilty, Brett Kahr, Mark Linington, Salvatore Martini, David O’Driscoll, Valerie Sinason, and Tom Wooldridge. Every psychotherapist will be familiar with what it means to experience the hatred and despair of their most vulnerable patients in the midst of a psychotherapy session. Most often these patients will manage to express their feelings verbally, but what about those who never developed the capacity to speak? Or those who are capable of talking, but carry a complex range of unprocessed embodied feelings that cannot be verbally expressed? Some patients must rely on another type of language in order to communicate their dissociative states of mind. Primitive Bodily Communications explores how the ‘talking cure’ can still work when words fail and the body ‘talks’. Non verbal communication can be thought of as a form of body language and, even though this is a topic not frequently discussed, many practitioners have experienced working with people who communicate through the use of their bodies. The book does not refer to bodily communications as primitive because we see them as inferior to verbal language, but simply because they point to the beginnings of psychological development, to primary ways of being and relating, as well as to enduring aspects of ourselves. The contributors explore the topic of primitive bodily communications in the context of intellectual disability, eating disorders, and bodily neglect, focusing on the communicative aspect of bodily expressions within the therapeutic relationship. A wide spectrum of clinical cases illustrates how these patients can reach a state of better physical and emotional containment and, when possible, of verbal communication.

About the authors Acknowledgements Foreword by Susie Orbach Use of terms Introduction by Raffaella Hilty 1.The spitting patient: speaking with sputum and free-associating with saliva Brett Kahr 2. Working with primitive bodily communications in the context of unbearable trauma in non-verbal patients Valerie Sinason 3. The sound of silence. Working with people with an intellectual disability who self-harm David O'Driscoll 4. Patients who smell: olfactory communication and the mephitic other Gabrielle Brown 5. Body odour in a psychoanalytic treatment: bridge or drawbridge to a troubled past? Raffaella Hilty 6. In corpore inventitur: embodied countertransference and the process of unconscious somatic communication Salvatore Martini 7. Revisiting the entropic body: when the body is the canvas Tom Wooldridge 8. When the psyche shreds and the body takes over William F. Cornell 9. Responding to trauma-based communication in psychotherapy Mark Linington References Index,

About the authors
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Susie Orbach
Use of terms
Introduction by Raffaella Hilty
1.The spitting patient: speaking with sputum and free-associating with saliva
Brett Kahr
2. Working with primitive bodily communications in the context of unbearable trauma in non-verbal patients
Valerie Sinason
3. The sound of silence. Working with people with an intellectual disability who self-harm
David O’Driscoll
4. Patients who smell: olfactory communication and the mephitic other
Gabrielle Brown
5. Body odour in a psychoanalytic treatment: bridge or drawbridge to a troubled past?
Raffaella Hilty
6. In corpore inventitur: embodied countertransference and the process of unconscious somatic communication
Salvatore Martini
7. Revisiting the entropic body: when the body is the canvas
Tom Wooldridge
8. When the psyche shreds and the body takes over
William F. Cornell
9. Responding to trauma-based communication in psychotherapy
Mark Linington
References
Index

• Edited by Raffaella Hilty

'I enjoyed this book, particularly its openminded approach to different patient groups from those generally described in clinical papers. As with child and adolescent work, and infant observation, we can learn a great deal of what the body is communicating in these patients: another way of thinking about the phenomena of incorporation, evacuation, pleasure-seeking and elimination that are at the heart of all theory that draws on primitive experiences. It is refreshing and illuminating to read about working with marginalised people without power or agency, let alone a voice to be able to make sense of their experiences in a world in which they are all too often displaced. [...] Not to look away from what we might find shameful and hard to bear in ourselves as well as the other; this seems to be the timely message of an original and compassionate book.'

— Alice Cowley, British Psychotherapy Foundation, British Journal of Psychotherapy 00, 0 (2024) 1–4