Thinking (And Moving) Outside the Box: Psychoanalytic Treatment and Dance/Movement Therapy

by Larry S. Sandberg & Suzi Tortora

Pages 839-865 | Published online: 16 Oct 2019

Abstract

For psychoanalysts, an attunement to bodily experience occurs in a setting of relative immobility. Countertransference, reverie, and enactment are essential tools used to access poorly represented and unrepresented states. Psychotic patients pose particular challenges with primitive terrors managed through mind-body dissociation. Words can be rendered meaningless or annihilated, denuded of their symbolic significance. The frame is altered in dance/movement therapy where attunement to bodily experience, including movement, is a catalyst for exploring psychic experience. We present clinical material combining psychoanalytic treatment and dance/movement therapy to illustrate the synergy of these modalities.