Introduction and background
Welcome to Thinking Through the Body.
Whether you are a psychotherapist, holistic practitioner, neuroscientist,
client, trainer, or individual interested in understanding how we think through
our bodies, I hope you will find something to explore here.
Thinking through the body is an integrative project on which we
are all implicitly - and some of us explicitly - engaged. The understanding of
the body and its subtle processes has been split in our culture between a range of disciplines. For the last twenty years I have
explored the bodymind from a number of perspectives - theoretical,
experiential, therapeutic and scientific. It is a constant interweaving of
these different modes of processing/knowing/reflecting that has been the
central theme of my work. Many of my articles and public
lectures on body psychotherapy, psychosomatics, neuroscience, psychoanalytic
theory and attachment theory. See Index
of papers.
In my writing, teaching, and psychotherapeutic work, I aim to
define and explore the links between the physiological body, the emotional body
and the symbolic body. It is time to open out the whole concept of 'body' in
our culture, where understanding of its complex and subtle processes has been
split between a variety of disciplines. I want to
explore the idea that we actually think through our bodies in a multiplicity of ways. That indeed the body's continual rich dense
orchestrated responsive and active process is thinking.
Roz Carroll MA Cantab, UKCP registered psychotherapist,
member of
the Chiron Association of Body Psychotherapists (CABP)
I work as a body psychotherapist in private practice and as a
supervisor of psychotherapists with an interest in integration. I am a trainer
at the Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy (www.chiron.org), the Minster
Centre for Integrative Psychotherapy (www.minstercentre.co.uk) the Centre for
Attachment-based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (www.johnbowlbycentre.org.uk) and
at Terapia training in Integrative Child Psychotherapy (www.terapia.co.uk). I
teach a seminar series called The New Anatomy, one Friday evening a month,
November-April at Chiron in
London. I also lecture regularly
for Confer (www.confer.uk.com), an organisation running seminars and
conferences on psychotherapy, medicine and culture. I offer talks, and
tailor-made short courses in for training organisations. (Many of these are
available on this site See Index
of papers
In the past couple of years I have given lectures, informal talks,
and training days in a variety of psychotherapy and medical contexts on the
theme of the body. In my writing and teaching I have focussed on developing an
integrated model of psychotherapy which incorporates some of the new
developments in neuroscience. Body psychotherapy as a tradition has always drawn on the insights of scientific research about
the body and the brain. It therefore provides a useful bridge between
psychotherapy and contemporary developments in neuroscience because the
implications of working with an embodied process (and
essentially neuroscience is pointing increasingly to the holistic embodied
nature of all psychological phenomena) have always been at its theoretical and
practical core.
I trained as a body psychotherapist at Chiron during a phase when
it was rapidly evolving. This was evident in a more thorough critique of Reich,
and interest in object relations; a move from idealisation of the body (and its
wisdom) to appreciation of complexity, splitting and holding as bodily
phenomena; an increasing interest in the manifestation of transference and
countertransference in the body. In reflecting on my own work in private
practice, I am always exploring what it means to "work with the body" in the complex context of psychotherapy.
An academic background supports and facilitates my commitment to
integration and understanding of the theory of embodied experience. Originally
I studied English Literature at
Cambridge. I went on to do research
for a PhD at Yale on writing as a form of psychological processing. The
interest in poetry and language has informed my listening for somatic
metaphor.
My subject, H.D., was an analys and of Freud and later Schmideberg (Melanie
Klein's son-in-law). This stimulated my intensive study of psychoanalytic
texts.
Concurrently my interest in body psychotherapy grew and eventually
became the main focus of my professional life. As a body psychotherapist and a
trainer, I have wrestled with the issue of how to reconcile the sophistication
of the object relations emphasis on transference and countertransference with
the immediacy of a phenomenological approach - ie. exploring
the experience of contact, movement, touch, sensory imagery etc. I am aware
that the current countertransference revolution opens up the potential for
integrating these two psychotherapeutic emphases. In particular the writings of
Christopher Bollas, Susie Orbach and the Jungian Nathan Schwarz-Salant have
inspired me.
In recent years I have returned to writing and have appreciated
being able to weave across disciplines and keep a broad range of reference.
This includes an active interest in developments at the frontiers of
neuroscience, - Trevarthen, Panksepp, Solms, Damasio and particularly the work
of Allan Schore. It also includes an interest in thinkers like Bateson and
Lakoff. Relevant to all these dynamic new fields of enquiry is the overarching
metaphor and metamodel provided by complexity theory.
My fascination with the body in process has been nourished by my
engagement in dance and movement therapy over twenty years. I have explored
many avenues of dance, especially in the context of process and group work,
including studying Authentic Movement with Anne Herbert Smith in the
US
. I have also studied Body
Mind Centering, a mature synthesis of holistic, developmental, and contemporary
anatomy, which, whilst not a psychotherapy, is still profound in its scope for
working with a range of psychophysiological distress and disorder.
Other profoundly important influences on the development of my work are contemporary attachment theory and related fields (Schore, Fonagy, Beebe) and relational psychoanalysis (Mitchell, Messler Davies etc)
For articles on this site See Index
of papers
Resources and Links
www.body-psychotherapy.org.uk
www.therelationalschool.com
www.allanschore.com
www.erthworks.co.uk
www.playbacksouth.org
www.lindahartley.co.uk
Creative arts based/Gestalt therapy with children, adolescents and adults, contact Jon Blend, London <life-changes@ntlworld.com> Jon Blend runs short training course in Working with children and adolescents - www.gestaltcentre.co.uk/training/shortcourses.htm
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