Touching: Body Therapy and Depth Psychology

Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts #30

by Deldon Anne McNeely

Book by McNeely, Deldon Anne

Genres: Psychology

128 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1987

Reviews

[Chloe Glynn]

This ~100 page book opens with a well-written history of Jungian analysis and summaries of contributing practitioners to body therapy. There are a good number of interesting ideas in this section. A culture's disposition towards the body creates huge impacts for society. Our bodies carry our memories, and there are physical modes of reexperiencing and releasing that "energy." Cartesian dichotomy limits our ability to integrate the symbolic and the material.

When it actually begins to deal with body therapy, the professional jargon makes certain passages nearly impossible to read. The occasional burst of writing retains interest or demonstrates good argumentation. However, this is not a book for learning about why touching may be healing or even recommending modalities for delivering a touch-based therapy. This is a theoretical/analytic text about how to situate body therapy within Jungian analysis. It assumes the reader already has working knowledge of both modes and interrogates a whole host of esteemed opinions about what is appropriate within "the analytic frame" and what questions should a therapist ask of themselves when establishing an intervention. The two case studies are excellent, but that's about it. Its conclusions are necessary and need to be widely spread, but the book as a whole is unbearably specialized and irrelevant to almost everyone who is not already a Jungian analyst.

[Kayla]

It was kind of a slog to get through this, even though it was only 108 pages. I think she makes many powerful points about the neglect of the body in analysis, and her case studies were interesting, but I don’t think she gives enough serious consideration to the kinds of ethical issues that can emerge when therapists touch their clients. As a therapist who does, sometimes, think it can be therapeutic for clients to allow certain kinds of touch in the course of therapy(eg a hug), I was hoping for a deeper dive into what this can bring up in the transference and countertransference. But a lot of her theory was just based on the broad assertion that materialism convinced us that the body is the seat of the dangerous feminine principle and we should work to counteract this, without much acknowledgement for what actually can be dangerous in touch. There wasn’t really any mention of how touch could, for example, be a potentially retraumatizing element for those who have been violently or sexually victimized. Or how being victimized can radically alter the meanings of touch, even when it’s done by a trained body worker. Or how about the ways in which the power dynamic of the relationship may impact the ways in which a client perceives their ability to consent to touch?

Just needed more from this.

[JP]

a mini module of body therapy.
how body therapy is introduced with caution and the principle to be followed.
how dance therapy was helpful for the patients.
Her patients' experiences and not much to take for...
a dull book
Actually books starts from the 59th page.

[George]

new territory in my search for healing