Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy

by Kekuni Minton, Pat Ogden, Clare Pain, Daniel J. Siegel, Bessel van der Kolk

Overview

The body, for a host of reasons, has been left out of the "talking cure."
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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393704570
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/17/2006
Series:	Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.26(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Kekuni Minton, Ph.D., is a faculty member at Naropa University.

Pat Ogden, PhD, is the founder and director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Clare Pain, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Universities of Toronto and Western Ontario.

Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and completed his postgraduate medical education at UCLA with training in pediatrics and child, adolescent, and adult psychiatry. He is currently a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, founding co-director of UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, founding co-investigator at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain and Development, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational center devoted to promoting insight, compassion, and empathy in individuals, families, institutions, and communities. Dr. Siegel’s psychotherapy practice spans thirty years, and he has published extensively for the professional audience. He serves as the Founding Editor for theNorton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology which includes over three dozen textbooks. Dr. Siegel’s books include Mindsight, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology, The Developing Mind, Second Edition, The Mindful Therapist, The Mindful Brain, Parenting from the Inside Out (with Mary Hartzell, M.Ed.), and the three New York Times bestsellers: Brainstorm, The Whole-Brain Child (with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.), and his latest No-Drama Discipline (with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.). He has been invited to lecture for the King of Thailand, Pope John Paul II, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Google University, and TEDx. For more information about his educational programs and resources, please visit: www.DrDanSiegel.com.

Editorial Reviews

This book will be read and valued by researchers and clinicians alike, as well as academics and those who already practice body-oriented psychotherapies. This is a rare achievement. . . . [H]ighly recommended.

PsycCritiques

[A]n exemplary collaboration within the village of traumatology….[G]rounded in the whole body of knowledge available to us about trauma….They also offer explanations of new concepts in clear language and couple the technical information with familiar ideas….Although clinicians in particular, will benefit from reading this book, it also will interest clients, researchers, and other mental health professionals….I highly recommend studying this book at a leisurely pace that allows for an integration of all that it offers.

Clinical Social Work Journal

I strongly recommend this fascinating and essential reading...it offers clinicians of all orientations a variety of psychosomatic treatment strategies.— Julia Mueller

Journal of Psychosomatic Research

[A] significant addition to the literature on…mind-body medicine….[T]his sensible, respectful, non-anthologizing, step-by-step approach helps people create balance in their lives.

Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy

I strongly recommend this fascinating and essential reading...it offers clinicians of all orientations a variety of psychosomatic treatment strategies.

Julia Mueller - Journal of Psychosomatic Research