Article
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis (2007) 67, 275–282. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ajp.3350033
Psychosomatics and Technique1
Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst, British Psychoanalytical Former Consultant Psychotherapist and Head of Department, Addenbrooke and Fulbourn Hospitals, Cambridge.
Jonathan Sklar
Correspondence: Jonathan Sklar, British Psychoanalytic Society, 58, Grafton Terrace, London NW54HY, UK. e-mail: jonathan@sklar.co.uk
1Paper presented at the Clinical Sándor Ferenczi Conference, August 2–6, 2006, Baden-Baden, Germany.
Abstract
Several clinical vignettes express the unconscious use of the patient's body as containing and enacting a somatic defense until free association enables affect to be found in the clinical setting. In this paper, there is a plea to take the body of the patient as seriously as the mind and language. As Ferenczi eloquently remarked "one needs to have lived through an affective experience, to have, so to speak, felt it in ones body, in order to gain conviction."
Keywords:
psychosomatic, free association, Ferenczi
