The embodiment of words – A clinical study

This paper about the treatment process with a young woman, Anna, illustrates how issues of thinking, reflecting, finding words to express emotions, were closely intertwined with processes in her body. Her difficulties in her adult life corresponded closely to the effects of the development of a “second skin”, as this phenomenon was described by the famous article by Esther Bick in 1968. During her analytic process, Anna needed to find words to enable a loosening of bodily tension, while in a reciprocal action a more relaxed body facilitated emotional and cognitive functioning. She had developed a compensatory adhesive identification with her mother, characterizing also her way of relating within the transference and to other close relationships. Her creative unconscious suggestive of Chr. Bollas’ concept of psychic genera (Bollas, 1993) has helped her in her struggle to bridge gaps in her development. The therapist has consciously tried not to interfere with the patient’s way of finding her trajectory to facilitate development, in order to avoid a possible impasse by becoming caught in a protracted adhesive transference constellation

Action (physics) · Bridge (graph theory) · Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Epistemology · Identification (biology) · Linguistics · Phenomenon · Projective identification · Psychic · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Reciprocal · Unconscious mind · Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy

• Adhesive Identification

  Donald Meltzer•Contemporary Psychoanalysis•1975

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• The Meanings and Uses of Countertransference

  Open Access•Heinrich Racker•The Psychoanalytic Quarterly•2007

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• Expulsion from the Garden of Eden

  Gudrun Bodin•The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic…•2010

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