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Embodiment: A New Key to the Unconscious?

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Somatoform and Other Psychosomatic Disorders

Abstract

The dialogue between psychoanalysis and the so-called embodied cognitive science has led to alternative understandings of the unconscious functioning of the mind. Unconscious learning, problem-solving and memory are no longer conceptualized as functions of a “saving in the brain”, but invariably the product of complex, self-regulated, sensomotoric coordination. Psychic processes, such as “unconscious memories” or affects and fantasies evoked in a certain situation, are “constructed” between subject and environment in the here and now of a current interaction: consequently, thinking, feeling and action thus arise only interactively; the subject cannot learn in an insular quasi-autistic capsule and further develop itself: it requires interaction with the environment. The concept of “embodiment” is thus radically “historical”, as psychic processes in the present always take place as the product of sensomotoric coordinations analogous to those in the subject’s idiosyncratic past: the past inevitably impacts the present and future, that is, for the most part, unconsciously. With an extensive summary of a psychoanalysis with a severely traumatized patient, it is illustrated that in traumatized individuals, the capability of continuous adaptation to new situations may completely break down or at least becomes very limited. Therefore the “inadequate, embodied” reactions in a current situation (e.g. in the transference) may offer some keys for understanding the original traumatic situation.

This paper will be published in another version in German in a book on trauma, edited by Heinz Weiss.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    LAC study (Langzeitbehandlungen chronisch Depressiver): a randomized controlled study comparing the outcomes of long-term psychoanalytical and cognitive behavioural psychotherapies with chronic depressed patients (see www. Sigmund-freud-institut.de)

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  1. Sigmund Freud Institut, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber

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  1. Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber
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Correspondence to Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber .

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  1. Dillenburg, Germany

    Christos Charis

  2. Department of Psychology and Center for Applied Neuroscience, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Georgia Panayiotou

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Leuzinger-Bohleber, M. (2018). Embodiment: A New Key to the Unconscious?. In: Charis, C., Panayiotou, G. (eds) Somatoform and Other Psychosomatic Disorders. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89360-0_7

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