The Experience of Another Body on Our Body in Psychoanalysis: Commentary on Paper by Jon Sletvold

Abstract

The current challenge of complexity requires that we overcome the mind–body dichotomy in order to find a more holistic way to explore human experience. Contemporary relational psychoanalysis tries to get past the overemphasis placed on language, and to include the development and promotion of a greater awareness of the bodily experience of the patient and analyst, with respect to their “bodies as they relate to each other.” We especially agree with Sletvold about the notion that psychoanalysis has a great deal to learn from the performing arts in terms of engaging in emotional communication and therefore of training the body to express emotions. This is true in particular for the “arts of time”: music, dance, acting. Unlike Sletvold, we keep the relational standpoint as a point of departure rather than as a point of arrival of processes. According to us, imitation is not the result of induction; rather it is a process whereby we discover and rediscover, that is, we find again the remains of the effects of another body on our body. In clinical praxis we should learn how to allow an ongoing dialectic between the implicit and the explicit. Finally, we underscore that we find the training program proposed by Sletvold original, innovative, and stimulating.