It is well understood that psychoanalysis began with Freud’s encounter withudhysteria and his work with illnesses of the mind which manifested in bodily terms.udHowever, despite its close connection to the body and the understanding thatudpsychoanalytic theory and practice develop hand-in-hand, psychological conflictudthat expresses itself in physical terms and more especially the role of the twoudbodies in the therapy room has received relatively little attention. The topic of thisudresearch project is captured in its title: “Minding the Body”, and the four journaludarticles it presents interrogate the relationship between the mind and body of bothudthe patient and therapist. The thesis begins with two published papers which focusudon the body of the patient, rehearsing and extending the psychoanalytic theory ofudbodily psychopathology and the implications that the different understandings ofudthe relationship between body and mind in different forms of psychosoma have forudclinical interventions. The second two papers examine what the analyst’sudinterpretation of her somatic responses to the patient, and the patient’sudengagement with the analyst’s body, can reveal about the dynamics of theudtherapeutic dyad. The project concludes with a discussion of the clinicaludimplications of a greater focus on the two bodies in the room, suggesting that theudtechniques developed to make sense of the patient’s physical symptoms can beudusefully applied to decode the somatic countertransference as it manifests in audparticular therapeutic dyad. That process, coupled with an awareness of theudpatient’s engagement with the therapist’s body, can create conditions under whichudthe analyst’s body may become an analytic object and this can add significantly toudthe analytic repertoire.
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