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In search of a vocabulary of
embodiment
a
Roz Carroll
a
The Minster Centre , London, UK
Published online: 25 Nov 2011.
To cite this article: Roz Carroll (2011) In search of a vocabulary of embodiment, Body,
Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy: An International Journal for Theory, Research
and Practice, 6:3, 245-257, DOI: 10.1080/17432979.2011.617132
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Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy
Vol. 6, No. 3, December 2011, 245–257
Introduction
When we talk of the mind influencing the body or the body influencing the mind
we are merely using convenient shorthand for a more cumbersome phrase.
(Ernest Jones quoted in Winnicott, 1949, p. 243)
I know who the readers are, and I know what language they will accept. (Stern,
cited in Sandler, Sandler, & Davies, 2000, p. 122)1
In this book, then, the term ‘body’ is used as a generic term for the embodied
origins of imaginative structures of understanding, such as image schemata and
their metaphorical elaborations. (Johnson, 1987, p. xv)
We all know what we are referring to when we use the word ‘body’ in a literal
sense; it means ‘the physical biological structure of a person’. But for those of
us working with the body in psychotherapy, this simple definition does not
convey the rich meaning of the body as we understand it. Fortunately, as Nick
Totton suggested in his recent article in this journal, the conceptual meaning of
‘the body’ is increasingly under scrutiny now in the social sciences and
philosophy (Totton, 2009). This is generating a wider exploration of the social,
emotional and psychological functions of the body.
The starting point for this article was my own difficulties in identifying the
language I wanted to use for writing about the body in psychotherapy. I spent a
couple of years working on a book about the body which aimed to incorporate
*Email: thinkbody@lineone.net
Writing contexts
Firstly we have to deal with different publishing contexts and therefore
different genres of writing: theoretical, clinical, evocative, phenomenological,
scientific, popular and specialist. The language used in each type of article will
have particular effect on our way of knowing or understanding.
From the outset, body and movement psychotherapies have struggled to
find terms to reflect the sense of wholeness, of interconnectedness of mind and
body, coining or borrowing such terms as ‘bodymind’, ‘somatics’, ‘self-
regulation’, ‘organismic’ and ‘holistic’. Each word has its own historical
pathway, reflecting an attempt to overcome the dualism inherent in the
language of biology, psychoanalysis, medicine and psychology.
With the expansion of interdisciplinary thinking (Carroll, 2002) comes
a proliferation of new terms, technical language and concepts; ‘affect
regulation’, ‘attunement’, ‘attachment’, ‘alexithymia’, just to start with a few
a’s. These terms reflect on-going attempts to theorise the body’s role in
human communication, thinking and interaction (Carroll, 2003; Schore, 2003).
In an attempt to embrace related fields of knowledge, our writing may stretch
to include, explain and build on understanding and research findings from
cognitive and experimental psychology, anatomy, infant observation, ethology,
ethnography, neurobiology, evolutionary psychology, linguistics, psychoneu-
roimmunology, anthropology, behavioural neuroscience, comparative psy-
chology, systems theory, metapsychology, artificial intelligence and philosophy
of science.
But the proliferation of new concepts and technical terms can create
as well as alleviate problems in discussions about the body. As Harris has
written, ‘the project of designing useful conversations between disci-
plines entails many problems of translation, of language, of values, of
power, of interests’ (2005, p. 2). In the dialogue between psychotherapy and
science there are also issues of specificity, complexity and generalisation to
address.
Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy 247
p. 58).
Writers addressing psychotherapists are caught between competing
demands for potted versions of brain science which will explain clinical
phenomena and satisfying the exhortations of others who criticise reductive
and simplistic theories of human behaviour. Added to this is how prose style
itself, the rhythm of the language and the length of the sentences, influence our
understanding of the body. Some styles of writing veer more towards the right
brain, inviting felt experience, evoking aesthetic texture, and employing a rich
use of rhythm, sensuousness and metaphor. Academic publications are usually
more oriented towards the left brain in that they are explanatory, inductive,
technically specific and written to be accurate and unambiguous. In scientific
journals, language is required to be impersonal and persuasive only in its
accumulation of established and referenced data.2 This kind of writing does not
offer an experience of the body, and it makes a heavy demand on the
uninitiated-to-the-field reader.
There will be many factors influencing our choice of language and there can
be no prescription for the right terminology.3 Instead, perhaps, we can develop
our awareness of what language we are using and why. We are in an era now
where the concept of psychology as the study of mental life is gradually giving
way to the acceptance of mind as emerging from and encompassing the
emotional, bodily and relational (Carroll, 2005; Damasio, 1994; Schore, 2003).
This is in large part due to developments in systems theory, research methods,
technology and interdisciplinary thinking. It is a step forward. But the question
remains: how do we maintain a wide frame of reference and keep developing an
internally coherent language?
truth but it’s a relational outcome of the inter-subjective field’ (Orbach &
Carroll, 2006, p. 68).
‘What is a body?’ was the first question Orbach asked me in the interview.
I replied, ‘a complex organism’. At the time I chose the word organism because
it implied a whole brain-body system in an environment. The words organism
and organismic have been widely used in body psychotherapy and Gestalt
psychotherapy for decades. However, I recently decided to rule it out of my
vocabulary (and implicitly move closer to Orbach’s position) because it
underemphasises mind and relationality; it suggests a pre-cultural entity rather
than a person.
On the other hand, ‘organisation’ or ‘self-organisation’ or ‘self-organising’,
which share a common verbal root with organism, have become a staple part
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tendency to drink too much. ‘The bottle’ stands for the act of drinking, or even
alcoholism. Another way of saying this is that the part is used to refer to a
larger whole or process. With the popularisation of science we see this
condensing and simplifying of complex processes entering into normal speech,
‘Adrenalin got him to the top’ or ‘It’s her hormones talking’.
The danger of this kind of fast and loose speech is that it blurs the
boundaries of conceptual thought. Some may hear it as shorthand for a more
elaborate explanation; others may start to take it literally. Technical words are
prevalent and may end up being used in a way that bears little resemblance
to their original function. As the roles and functions of parts or substances
within the brain and the body are clarified, differentiated and increasingly
understood, the information is often presented (by writers trying to make it
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‘bodies’. The meaning of the word ‘body’ for me has evolved in the constant
and reciprocal shifts between theories and felt experiences. I have noticed
that when I write about ‘the body’ it appears I am ascribing intentionality to
the body when actually the intentionality belongs to the person. I am using the
word ‘body’ not literally but metonymically, to stand for something.
‘The body’, for me, stands for the capacity for, and quality of, living
awareness, responsiveness and creativity. I use the term ‘body’ in a catch-all
sense (to stand for the whole) partly to rebalance the emphasis there has been
on a psychic realm whose relationship with the body was either absent, vague,
pathologised or restricted.
Barsalou and Wiemer-Hastings (2005) argue that words, including abstract
concepts, are comprehended by activating images of relevant situations across
multiple contexts. Slingerland (2008) summarises their proposal like this:
On this account, both hammer and truth are comprehended by means of concrete
imagery; our sense that truth is more ‘abstract’ derives from the fact that its
content is distributed across a multitude of situations and involves complex
events, introspective simulation of somato-sensory states, and multiple modalities
of perception. (p. 60, original italics)
If I take on board the full weight of this argument, I understand both how
and why there is such a gap between the meaning of the word ‘body’ for me and
the meaning of that word for someone else. In this context, the word body is as
profound and complex a category as the words ‘woman’, ‘mother’ or ‘Anglo-
Irish’ etc for example. Just as we are gradually deconstructing stereotypes of
what gender, race and sexual orientation mean; that in fact the meanings of
these terms are wide-open, complex, multi-layered, personal, political, and
unique-to-the-user, so too must we realise is the word ‘body’.
Final thoughts
I think of the body as a perceptual space, an organism, a cultural object, as the
site of subjectivity, of transformation and process, and as the vehicle for all
aspects of live communication. In this sense, of course, ‘the body’ always
includes the brain as part of the total system; and indeed ‘the body’ by itself is
meaningless without a social cultural intersubjective field. One of the themes of
this article is that evolving interdisciplinary language means that body,
Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy 255
of the body’ (Totton, cited in Carroll, 2010). I found this an exhilarating and
inspired metaphor. It captures the complexity of the way a healthy mind moves
between observation and immersion in its experiential field. Further the
dolphin image via its resonant associations conveys the aspects of sensitive
communicativeness and vibrant animated life which are central to my
understanding of embodiment.
Notes on contributors
Roz Carroll is a body psychotherapist with an interest in movement, neuroscience and
relational psychoanalysis. She teaches on the MA in Integrative Psychotherapy at
The Minster Centre. She is the author of numerous articles and chapters, including,
most recently ‘Self-regulation – an evolving theory at the heart of psychotherapy’
in Contemporary Body Psychotherapy (2009) ed. L. Hartley (www.thinkbody.co.uk)
Notes
1. Stern made this comment during a debate with Andre Green about the role of
science in psychoanalysis. He was defending an article he had written for the Infant
Mental Health Journal (cited in Sandler, Sandler, & Davies, 2000, p. 122).
2. On the other hand, increasing efforts are being made to include the body in
qualitative description of human experience ‘the aesthetic dimension’ in social,
health and psychological research (Todres, 1998).
3. The peer reviewer of this article has pointed out the omission of a reference to the
languages of Laban Movement Analysis and the Kestenberg Movement Profile
which are used in DMP. I have not studied these systems although I am aware of
them. It is too late to incorporate a discussion of the language into the whole article
but what strikes me about Laban Movement Analysis is its use of direct, simple,
words such as ‘shape, weight, flow, effort’ to categorise key aspects of embodied
movement (Laban & Lawrence, 1974). It is a language system that gives an
objective technical reference for subtle and complex embodied states.
4. Under the section heading ‘What is a body?’ Totton touches on the very different
assumptions about the body held by social theorists and feminists.
5. Yet actually Gestalt psychotherapy got here some time ago. Fritz Perls declared
more than half a century ago that self is ‘the system of contacts at any moment’
(Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951, p. 235).
256 R. Carroll
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