Psychotherapists who have been trained in models of psychodynamic,
psychoanalytic, or cognitive therapeutic approaches are skilled at
listening to the language and affect of the client. They track the
clients' associations, fantasies, and signs of psychic conflict,
distress, and defenses. Yet while the majority of therapists are trained
to notice the appearance and even the movements of the client's body,
thoughtful engagement with the client's embodied experience has remained
peripheral to traditional therapeutic interventions. Trauma and the
Body is a detailed review of research in neuroscience, trauma,
dissociation, and attachment theory that points to the need for an
integrative mind-body approach to trauma. The premise of this book is
that, by adding body-oriented interventions to their repertoire,
traditionally trained therapists can increase the depth and efficacy of
their clinical work. Sensorimotor psychotherapy is an approach that
builds on traditional psychotherapeutic understanding but includes the
body as central in the therapeutic field of awareness, using
observational skills, theories, and interventions not usually practiced
in psychodynamic psychotherapy. By synthesizing bottom-up and top down
interventions, the authors combine the best of both worlds to help
chronically traumatized clients find resolution and meaning in their
lives and develop a new, somatically integrated sense of self.
Topics addressed include: Cognitive, emotional, and sensorimotor
dimensions of information processing - modulating arousal - dyadic
regulation and the body - the orienting response - defensive
subsystems - adaptation and action systems - treatment principles -
skills for working with the body in present time - developing somatic
resources for stabilization - processing
