16

Somatic Countertransference
The Therapist in Relationship
1

Patrizia Pallaro

In recent years, quite a few psychotherapists, body psychotherapists, Jungian analysts,

and psychoanalysts have reclaimed the eminent place of the body and bodily felt
emotions in the psychotherapeutic process (Anzieu, 1989; Bartal and Ne’eman, 1993;
Ben-Asher and Koren, 2002; Bernstein, 1984; Boyer, 1990a, 1990b, 1993; Boyer and
Doty, 1993; Cahill and Halsten, 2004; Charles, 2004; Chodorow, 1982, 1986, 1991;
Dosamantes, 1992; Dosamantes-Alperson, 1984, 1987; Dosamantes-Beaudry, 1997,
2003; Field, 1989; Gaddini, 1987; Greene, 1984; Guntrip, 1971; Jacobs, 1973;
Kepner, 1993; Kramer and Akhtar, 1992; Krueger, 1989; La Barre, 2001, 2005;
Lewis, 1992, 1993; MacDonald, 2005; McDougall, 1989; Miller, 2000; Nikolitsa,
2002; Pallaro, 1993; Ross, 2000; Samuels, 1989; Sandel, 1980; Schore, 2003;
Schwartz-Salant, 1982, 1986; Shaw, 2004; Siegel, 1996; Silverman, 1991; Skove,
1986; Staunton, 2002; Stolorow, Brandchaft and Atwood, 1987, 1994; Totton, 2003;
Turp, 2001; Winnicott, 1970; Woodman, 1983; Wyman, 1992; Wyman-McGinty,
1998). Hillman (1964) writes:
Analysis too pays meticulous attention to the body. It observes and listens to the body
as an experience. The body is the vessel in which the transformation process takes
place. The analyst knows that there are no lasting changes unless the body is affected.
Emotion always tears at the body, and the light of consciousness requires the heat of
emotion… The analyst also pays the same careful attention to his own body, listening
to cues in his own flesh to aid his dialectic. He tries to sense during the hour when he is
tired and hungry, sexually excited, slumped in passivity, irritatedly fidgeting, or
developing symptoms and illness. His body is a sounding board. This sensitivity is
appropriate to the body as experience and fits the analytical work. (p.146)

1 This is a revised version of a paper originally published in H. Smitskamp and Z. Fibert (eds) (1995) The Arts
Therapist, vol. 1 pp.139–49. Conference Proceedings, Third European Arts Therapies Conference, ECArTE.
University of Hertfordshire, UK.

176
 SOMATIC COUNTERTRANSFERENCE: THE THERAPIST IN RELATIONSHIP 177

The term countertransference was first coined by Freud as a spin-off from his analysis of
transference. Freud (1910) noted that, as the patient projected her/his own infantile
wishes, conflicts and object relations onto the analyst, the analyst him/herself was not
immune from emotional reactions to patients’ experiences. He defined counter-
transference as unconscious reactions to the patient which needed to be identified and
eliminated in order not to interfere with treatment. Although two years later Freud
(1912) spoke of the analyst’s unconscious as needing to be like a “receptive organ
towards the transmitting unconscious of the patient” (p.115) and despite Ferenczi’s
work (1932) illustrating how the analyst’s thoughts and feelings in relationship to his
analysand were of absolute importance for the psychoanlaytic endeavor, it was not
until the 1950s and 1960s that analysts used countertransference to better understand
their patients’; experiences were not reprimanded, banned or marginalized but listened
to. The seminal works of Heimann (1950), Little (1951), Money-Kyrle (1956), Racker
(1968), and Winnicott (1949) re-introduced the idea that the countertransferential
phenomenon may be actually therapeutically useful. In Heimann’s (1950) words: “the
analyst’s emotional response to his patient within the analytic situation is one of the
most important tools for his work. The analyst’s countertransference is an instrument
of research into the patient’s unconscious… Our basic assumption is that the analyst’s
unconscious understands that of his patient” (p.81).
Racker (1968) distinguished between “countertransference neurosis” and
“countertransference proper,” with the latter occurring in two different modalities
defined as “concordant countertransference” and “complementary countertrans-
ference.” Countertransference neurosis “designates a gamut of potential responses from
the analyst, ranging from short-lived, internal experiences to relatively intense and
prolonged experiences that are acted out by the analyst” (Gorkin, 1987, p.73). This
type of countertransference, which occurs in order to defend unintegrated or split-off
parts of the analyst’s psychic reality, is destructive to the therapeutic relationship.
Concordant countertransference, based upon the mechanisms of projection and
introjection and directly related to empathy, allows the therapist to acknowledge the
patient’s feelings. Complementary countertransference results from the patient
projecting internal good or bad objects onto the therapist, the therapist identifying
with them and acting as if he/she is that internal object.
In the last twenty-five years, there has been a tremendous effort to conceptualize
countertransference in a more wholistic manner, as a product of a mutually affecting
relationship, involving more than one mode of experiencing. Schore (1994) decisively
states: “countertransferential processes are currently understood to be manifest in the
capacity to recognize and utilize the sensory (visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, and
olfactory) and affective qualities of imagery which the patient generates in the psycho-
therapist” (p.451). Boyer (1983, 1990a, 1990b), Giovacchini (1981, 1989), Kernberg
(1965), Sandler (1993), Scharff (1992), Scharff and Scharff (1998), Searles (1987),
Waska (2004), and Zeller-Steinbrich (2004), among others, have emphatically promoted
the idea that countertransference may also include the analyst’s conscious and appropriate
emotional response to the patient’s material. King (1978) advises “a careful monitor-
ing of [the analyst’s] affective responses to his patient’s communications” in order to
“differentiate those feelings and moods which are related to the operation of the trans-
ference, from those related to my reactions as a human being working with another
human being” (pp.330–1). Boyer (1983), on the other hand, goes so far as to state that
“in general, my emotional responses constitute valid clinical data” (p.367). Lomas
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(1993) states that “countertransference is the therapist’s subjective reaction to the

unconscious messages that the patient is directing towards her, a phenomenon that
gives a possible access to the patient’s state of mind and intentions” (p.72). Rosenfeld
(1987) describes the relationship between therapist and patient as an “interplay involv-
ing their mutual introjection of the other’s projective identifications.” Boyer (1993)
further elaborates this concept and states that:
whatever the analyst experiences during the analytic session constitutes his
idiosyncratic introjection of the patient’s verbal and nonverbal communications,
containing the patient’s projections, and the analyst’s predominantly unconscious
reactions to those introjections. In addition, the analyst exists as a part of the analytic
third, experiencing and simultaneously observing himself, the analysand and the
analytic third as they interact with one another. We should not be misled into thinking
our stray, apparently unrelated thoughts, fantasies, and physical or emotional
reactions can be dismissed as idle preoccupations, taking us away from the business at
hand, interfering with our free-floating or evenly hovering attention. (p.10)
While Langs (1978) and Ferro (1999) see countertransference as an interactional
product within a “bipersonal field,” Stolorow et al. (1987) emphasize that “counter-
transference (broadly conceptualized as a manifestation of the analyst’s psychological
structures and organizing activity) has a decisive impact in shaping the transference
and codetermining which of its specific dimensions will occupy the experiential
foreground of the analysis. Transference and countertransference together form an
intersubjective system of reciprocal mutual influence” (p.42).
Hamilton (1988) aptly confirms that:
using countertransference effectively depends on the therapist’s ability to be aware of
his emotions without defending too vigorously against whatever unpleasantness may
arise. Clinicians repress and distort their feelings for their own, nontherapeutic
purpose… For therapy to proceed, these countertransference distortions and
displacements must be sorted out. The result will not be a completely neutral interest,
as was once thought, but the ability to be more directly aware of strong feelings that
patients bring to the session and elicit from the therapist. (p.240)
Likewise, Bollas (1987) states:
By establishing a countertransference readiness I am creating an internal space which
allows for a more complete and articulate expression of the patient’s transference
speech than if I were to close down this internal space and replace it with some ideal
notion of absolute mental neutrality or scientific detachment. (p.202)
Pick (1985) further shows that “the experience for the analyst [in relationship to a
patient] is a powerful one. To suggest that we are not affected by the destructiveness of
the patient or by the patient’s painful efforts to reach us would represent not neutrality
but falseness or imperviousness.” What is crucial to the therapeutic endeavour “is the
issue of how the analyst allows himself to have the experience, digest it, formulate it,
and communicate it as an interpretation” (pp.164–5). Selective disclosure of one’s own
countertransference may be valuable to the therapeutic process, provided that issues of
technique are respected.
Further contributions by Grinberg (1979), Grotstein (1981), Ogden (1979,
1982, 1985), Sandler (1993), Scharff (1992), Scharff and Scharff (1998), Tansey and
 SOMATIC COUNTERTRANSFERENCE: THE THERAPIST IN RELATIONSHIP 179

Burke (1989), Waska (2004), among others, on projective identification, projective

counteridentification, introjective identification, and potential space, have enriched
the debate. Many have amplified Klein’s (1946) original definition of projective iden-
tification as a process vital to a balanced and integrated psychological life, during
which—first as an infant, then as a child and later on as an adult––one expels bad as
well as good objects and projects them into another for safekeeping. But it was Bion
(1984) who presented this process as inducing particular states of mind in another,
thus conceptualizing projective identification as a form of communication, shaping or
interfering with the experience of countertransference. Schore (2003), in his seminal
psychoneurobiological synthesis, describes “projective identification as an early orga-
nizing unconscious coping strategy for regulating right-brain-to- right-brain commu-
nications, especially of intense affective states” (p.63) between mother and infant or
therapist and patient. Projective identification is then viewed as “a preverbal bodily
based dialogue between right-lateralized limbic systems, especially in intensely
emotional contexts” (p.70).
Ogden (1982) emphasizes that:
projective identification is in part a statement about an interpersonal interaction (the
pressure of one person on another to comply with a projective fantasy) and in part a
statement about individual mental activity (projective fantasies, introjective fanta-
sies, psychological processing). Most fundamentally, however, it is a statement about
the dynamic interplay of the two, the intrapsychic and the interpersonal. (Ogden,
1982, p.3)
Scharff (1992) pushes further in explaining how “the analyst’s necessary involvement
in projective identification” is rooted in the analyst’s own “valency for introjective
identification” (pp.229–30). That is to say that each of us as therapists has a penchant
for resonating with some (and not other) materials presented by the patient. Our own
introjects, sometimes largely unknown even to the most experienced analyst, become
identified with those of our patients.
Gordon (1965) underscores the important role of projective identification in the
construction of countertransference: “The relevance of projective identification is that
its occurrence is at a time in early development before soma and psyche have been truly
differentiated (p.129).” It is this undifferentiated, preverbal, yet intense, material that
needs to surface into awareness, be sorted out, metabolized by the therapist and then
placed in context and given meaning through words in order to effectively make use of
it. Waska (2004) states:
countertransference is the result of the patient’s projective identification dynamics and
the totality of the therapeutic relationship. It exists. The question is not what to do if
countertransference is present in a treatment, but what form it takes and how to use it.
(p.105)
However, Sandler (1993) warns us that there is no “one-to-one correspondence
between what goes on in the analyst and what is in the mind of the patient” (p.1104),
and terms as “wild countertransference analysis” that which construes analysts’
subjective experiences “as having been ‘put into them’ by the patient, [using then] their
own feelings, thoughts and phantasies as a basis for the interpretation of the patient’s
unconscious phantasies” (p.1104). Going a little further, Chused (1991) and Gabbard
(1995) caution us about the perils of “countertransference enactments” which may
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“occur when an attempt to actualize a transference fantasy elicits a countertransference

reaction” (Chused, 1991, p.629) which is in turn actualized, unconsciously, in a
specific behavior. On the other hand, Pick (1985) and Carpy (1989) believe that the
countertransference is always “acted out” to some degree. In order to effect change, we
therapists need to allow our patients to touch us deeply and be able to “tolerate” the
countertransference thus elicited, able “to allow oneself to experience the patient’s
projections in their full force, and yet be able to avoid acting them out in a gross way”
(Carpy, 1989, p.289).
The debate on whether countertransference is an obstacle to be overcome, an
interference to be eradicated or an instrument with which to gauge our patients’
development, promoted valuable discussions in the early years of psychoanalysis and
continues to elicit reflections at the present time. A compelling review of the history of
the concept and its many transmutations can be found in clear expositions by Jacobs
(2002) and Mills (2004). A critical summary of the current views on transference and
countertransference has been laid out by Eagle (2000), while Scharff and Scharff
(1998) have mapped an integrated, multidimensional, comprehensive model of
transference and countertransference. They have synthesized a “geography of transfer-
ence and countertransference” (p.265) by which it is possible to understand elements of
either or both from an intellectual point of view as well as from feelings, fantasies, and
reveries. Both the therapist’s and the patient’s experiences are contextualized accord-
ing to events which occurred in their personal pasts, happening in the present, or in an
anticipated future, in the here-and-now of the therapy session as well as in both
therapist’s and patient’s histories determined by each person’s unique family and
community. Scharff and Scharff (1998) also distinguish between “contextual” and
“focused” countertransference, as reactions to patients’ feelings about the analytic
space provided for safe exploration (context) and to the transferential relationship
which recreates or displaces early relatedness (focus).
Further, pivotal to any psychotherapeutic relationship and intervention is a
concept of self beyond ethnocentric bias, one which allows room for integration of
different levels of experience, including that which is determined by cultural heritage
(Pallaro, 1997). Culture is a persistent and inevitable yet sometimes overlooked
variable in the enterprise of psychotherapy (Draguns, 1975, 1981; Price-Williams,
1979; White and Kirkpatrick, 1985; Yi, 1995). Cultural transference and
countertransference are co-created by both the patient and the therapist, reflecting not
only each of their internalized self–object representations and interpersonal
relationships, but also their sociocultural heritage, diverse family-of-origin environ-
ment, and membership in a dominant or minority group (Basch-Kahre, 1984;
Bonovitz, 2005; Pallaro, 1997; Shechter, 1992). As such, cultural transference and
countertransference need to be brought to awareness, explored, decoded, and the
emergent experience further investigated and metabolized.

Empathy
Empathy, generally defined as “the act of putting oneself in the other’s place” (Demos,
1984, p.9), always involves a relationship between two individuals, an awareness of
separateness between self and other (the object) as well as a heightened permeability of
ego boundaries (Katz, 1963). Schaefer (1959) describes empathy as “a reflective state
of mind in which the other’s feeling state is momentarily felt as one’s own, while yet
 SOMATIC COUNTERTRANSFERENCE: THE THERAPIST IN RELATIONSHIP 181

being aware that it is not one’s own” (p.342). Pick (1985) asserts that “in so far as we
take in the experience of the patient, we cannot do so without also having an
experience” (p.157). Essential to being empathic is the ability to oscillate between
observing and participating in someone else’s inner affective experiences.
Object relations theory describes the experience of being a person as a process of
synthesis and adaptation between inner life and outer reality (Pallaro, 1996). This
concept is fundamental to understanding countertransference. The sense of self is
attained through the ongoing process of differentiation of internalized images of one’s
own self and those of external objects (Engler, 1983; Jacobson, 1964; Kernberg, 1980;
Kohut, 1971, 1977; Mahler, Pine and Bergman, 1975; Stolorow and Lachmann, 1980;
Winnicott, 1958, 1960). Further, according to Johnson (1985) the concept of the self
has a “bipolar” quality (p.97), the self being at the same time subjective and objective,
both perceived and conceived, and always responded to. All agree on the crucial
validity of the subjective experience as it is lived through the body, principal organizer
of object representations in infancy (Pallaro, 1996). The core of the mother–infant
relationship is punctuated by bodily felt experiences which are the infant’s first source
of learning. Foulks and Schwartz (1982) remark that:
The image of the self is dynamically linked to the image of the object or other. Each
simultaneously shapes and is shaped by the other. The ways in which individuals
come, through parental and culturally determined socialization and developmental
experiences, to see the self, profoundly affect the ways in which they view and interact
with others. (p.256)
According to Broussard (1984), Buie (1981), Burlingham (1967), Charles (2004),
Kohut (1971), Mahler (1968), Stern (1985), Stolorow and Lachmann (1980), and
Winnicott (1958, 1960), the ability to be empathic originates and develops in the
process of attunement between mother and infant, which takes place at a bodily level.
Schore (2003) goes a bit further, stating that “the adaptive capacity of empathic cogni-
tion and the perception of the emotional states of mind of other human beings” (p.71)
are the result of right-lateralized brain operations which process visual, somatosensory,
gestural and motor activated information. In other words, the source of our empathic
felt knowledge is the body. The mother’s ability to meet the child’s needs, “to read the
infant’s cues and facilitate her/his emergent sense of potency, of being able to have an
impact on the environment” (Broussard, 1984, p.82), is considered essential for the
optimal development of the child. Empathy and the empathic response are always
crucial, between infant and caretaker, in interactions between adults, and certainly
between therapist and patient. Making verbal and nonverbal inferences about each
other’s inner experiences and needs makes us feel understood. This interpersonal sensi-
tivity manifests in adult life through a constant “mutual nonverbal mirroring and con-
firmation by the other” (Roland, 1984, p.578), as is so intensely experienced and
learned during an infant’s first years. Schwartz-Salant (1982) points out that:
To be mirrored is to be understood, to feel that someone empathically [sic] follows our
thoughts, feelings, experiences, etc… Yet to mirror another person requires a
willingness to enter into his or her world, to suspend critical judgment and reflect
what is being offered. The need for mirroring from another is lifelong, and represents
the inevitable incompleteness that accompanies growth. (pp.45–6)
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For Kohut (1971, 1977), applied to the psychotherapeutic process, empathy is a mode
of knowing the individual’s intricate mental states, by which one collects
psychological data about others and imagines their inner experience. Through
empathy we aim at discerning, in one single act of recognition, “what the patient might
be experiencing consciously or unconsciously” (Book, 1988, p.421). Buie (1981) adds
that the psychological tools needed in the empathic reflection “involve memory,
fantasy, conceptualization, and other cognition in relation to impulses, affects, body
sensations, superego pressures and gratifications, defenses, need-satisfying as well as
gratifying introjects” (p.289).
Research in neuroscience (Fonagy et al., 2002; Gallagher and Frith, 2004;
Sabbagh, 2004; Schore, 1994) as well as in psychotherapy (Schore, 2003; Shaw,
2004) confirms the notion that the body is an exquisite instrument for processing
physiological data, environmental cues, and perceptions related to feeling states. These
operations are undertaken within the right hemisphere, from the very first days of our
bodily lives. Empathy, conceived of as a mental state, develops thanks to and is depend-
ent on right hemispheric resources (Decety and Chaminade, 2003). This implies that
nonverbal, preverbal, and kinesthetic modes of communication (right hemisphere
activities) are the substrata in which further awareness development is rooted. By the
same token, communications between patient and analyst involve “a right hemisphere
state of receptivity that allows the analyst to empathically attune to the affective and
body states of the patient, which then creates the possibility of resonances or moments
of synchrony between the analyst and the patient at an unconscious, preconscious or
conscious level” (Stevens, 2005, p.9). Schore (2003) emphasizes that the “clinician’s
receptive orientation allows for a condition of resonance. . .that is the crescendos and
decrescendos of the empathic clinician’s psychobiological state in resonance with
similar crescendos and decrescendos of the patient’s state” (p.79). The therapist’s
empathic quality is deemed crucial to any kind of successful therapeutic relationship
and intervention, no matter which theoretical underpinnings may shape them
(Basch-Kahre, 1984; Bolognini, 2004; Book, 1988; Broussard, 1984; Burlingham,
1967; Kaplan, 1990; Kohut, 1971, 1977; Schwartz-Salant, 1982, 1986; Winnicott,
1949, 1958).

Kinesthetic empathy
2
Dance/movement therapists share a belief that “body movement is the most primary
means of communication” (Bernstein, 1982, p.5), and utilize a variety of bodily
techniques, aimed at fostering self-awareness and connecting inner psychic processes
with feelings and experiences in the outer world. Kinesthetic empathy refers to the
embodying of client’s feeling states and movement qualities, by the therapist. It utilizes
the kinesthetic, self-perceiving awareness of the therapist coupled with a bodily felt
understanding of the patient’s inner affective states (Dosamantes-Alperson, 1980;
Dosamantes-Beaudry, 2003). Berger (1972) writes:

2 As defined by the American Dance Therapy Association (1974), dance/movement therapy is “the
psychotherapeutic use of movement as a process which furthers the emotional and physical integration of
the individual.”
 SOMATIC COUNTERTRANSFERENCE: THE THERAPIST IN RELATIONSHIP 183

Our emotional reactions are not only determined in terms of kinesthetic recognition,
but in terms of kinesthetic response as well. We assimilate what we perceive into our
own present experience in the form of kinesthetic mimicry. We may perceive emo-
tional behavior in others and immediately experience it within our own bodies
through kinesthetic empathy. (p.209)
Kinesthetic empathy is further discussed by Dosamantes-Alperson (1984) in these
terms:
I make sense of my clients’ kinesthetic responses by recreating their movements in my
own body in the abbreviated form of incipient body movements. This kinesthetic
empathy enables me to sense and to respond to a client’s emotional state of the
moment. (p.278)
The same author also encourages dance/movement therapists to pay attention to
images elicited by unconscious somatic responses, which she terms “kinesthetic
imagery” (Dosamantes-Alperson, 1983; Dosamantes-Beaudry, 2003). The recent dis-
covery of “mirror neurons” may indicate that the ability to respond to another’s feeling
states and understand them is, in fact, a function of bodily-based, kinesthetic empathy
(Greatrex, 2002; Rizzolatti and Arbib, 1998; Wolf et al., 2001). Kleinman (2004) talks
about “trusting our innate ability to attend empathically, responding authentically”
(p.114) through the language of movement and the body. Rugg (1963) suggests that
tuning into “a kinesthetic experience of empathy” (p.236) is an invaluable source of
insight.
Schwartz-Salant (1982, 1986) points out the need for a mutual and simultaneous
participation of psychic and somatic empathy, in order to integrate precious
information springing from both the psychic and somatic unconscious of the patient.
He recognizes the role that the body (both analyst’s and patient’s) plays in tackling a
person’s inner processes, and stresses an empathic approach which weaves in and out of
its psychic and somatic aspects. Jacobs (1991, p.107) writes about “body empathy” and
illustrates how focusing on his own “kinesic behavior” and his “spontaneous bodily
movements” occurring in the presence of his patients offers him useful cues for
interpretations and affective linkages.
Kinesthetic empathy and somatic countertransference are interdependently
related. Fiedler (1989) comments:
Kinesthetic empathy is, more particularly, the bodily process of taking-in, or
tuning-into a client’s movements and bodily expressions. This mutual bodily
experience leads to a simultaneous reverberation of related feelings, to synchronicity
as a state of kinesthetic empathy. As the therapist’s focus shifts toward internal cues,
descending to a subconscious level, the process of introspection begins. The second
“phase of involvement” is characterized by emerging associations (in the enactive,
imaginal and lexical modes) relating to the perceived bodily experience. The
dance/movement therapist uses her body to receive, contain and interpret the
patient’s bodily felt experiences; thus, the therapist’s body becomes a resonating
chamber for transferential material as well as defensive reactions like splitting and
projection. This second phase allows somatic countertransference responses to
emerge, as the therapist opens up to more unconscious processes and to deeper
internal sources through empathy. (p.41)
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Somatic countertransference
Dance/movement therapists in particular have paid close attention to the bodily felt
responses and reactions occurring while engaged in the therapeutic process and
activities. While Boyer (1994) spoke of “somatosensory countertransference
experiences,” Samuels (1989) as well as Field (1989) of “embodied counter-
transference,” and Silverman (1991) of “body-language countertransference,” it was
Bernstein (1984) who coined the term “somatic countertransference” to define
precisely those countertransferential reactions which occur at a bodily level. She noted
3
the necessity to be aware of and embody the patient’s somatic unconscious so as to aid
the patient in the process of cathecting, metabolizing, and integrating split-off parts of
the self, as well as revealing the patient’s resistances and defenses. While most
dance/movement therapists strive to accomplish this task while engaged in a session
with their patients, Eberle (2000), Nikolitsa (2002), and Ramharter (2000) specifically
employ creative movement and dance improvisation after their sessions as a free
associative instrument in order to understand better their bodily responses
experienced while in relationship to their patients.
Somatic countertransference reactions are grouped by the same categories estab-
lished by Racker (1968): concordant and complementary. Dosamantes-Alperson
(1987) states that she pays attention to her “bodily-felt reactions, particularly comple-
mentary countertransference type reactions…[deemed useful] to determine the emo-
tional developmental level achieved by a given patient and to assess the kinds of
movement experiences that are likely to facilitate her/his emotional growth” (p.212).
Charles (2004) emphasizes that it is our countertransference, punctuated by our affec-
tive responsiveness rooted in our somatic memories, that allows us first to encounter
and then read our patients’ nonverbal cues. Charles (2004) further states that “our most
primary understandings are nonverbal” (p.98) and then goes on to say that they are:
derived from the regularities and disregularities of sensory experience that are
integrated as patterns that come to have meanings over time, whether or not we are
conscious of them… From our earliest moments of being, we begin to develop a
“language of the body.”…
Words give us a way of organizing our experiences, but they also distance us from
primary sensory experience… In therapy, there is an ongoing tension between the
need to provide sufficient containment to be able to look at what troubles us and the
need not to lose touch with the reality of the experience as lived. Many memories are
not encoded in words, but rather as body memories. (pp.98–9)
Thus it is imperative for a therapist to be able to access one’s own body memories,
bodily affective states, and sensations in order to differentiate one’s own material from
that of the patient’s. Pointedly, Schore (2003) advocates for the analyst to be
able to exercise his/her capacity for reflective thinking in order to model the self-
regulatory process for the patient, expressively through “recognition of his/her
countertransferential discomforting bodily signals (the somatic markers triggered by
his/her perception of the projective identification)” (p.97). Only by sensing and
paying attention to one’s own “counterregulatory reactions to the patient’s

3 Somatic unconscious or “subtle body” represents the unconscious as perceived and experienced in the body
(Schwartz-Salant, 1982, p.120).
 SOMATIC COUNTERTRANSFERENCE: THE THERAPIST IN RELATIONSHIP 185

dysregulation” (Schore, 2003, p. 98) can the therapist access information for the
patient’s benefit, hold unexpected bodily sensations and thus model a self-regulating
capacity for the patient.
The sensations described in the literature include pure body sensations (such as
dizziness, emptiness, hunger, fullness, claustrophobia, sleepiness, pain, restlessness,
sexual arousal, and so forth) as well as images rooted in the somatic unconscious (such
as sudden desire to hold the infant self of the patient, feeling penetrated by the patient,
feeling swallowed up whole or spit out in pieces, feeling choked to death, feeling like a
monstrous, devouring creature or a jester, etc.). Selective disclosure of somatic
countertransferential experiences is valued when appropriate, or used to verbalize
empathic comments or interpretative linkages. Dosamantes (1992) writes:
By accurately perceiving patients’ emotional subjective object-related experience in a
physical nonverbal way first and then reflecting it verbally back to them, therapists
accomplish two things simultaneously: a) they return patients back to a more
differentiated state of relating, and b) help them detoxify previously self-denigrating
experiences. (p.364)
Lewis (1988) often recreates and enacts the imaginal realm within the analytic hour,
consciously choosing actions or movement experiences to share and move with her
patients. Chodorow (1986) often chooses to open herself up to the energetic state of
“participation mystique” so that she may “join the mover [patient] in a timeless state”
(p.291) and experience the shared rhythms, pulses, emotions, and sensations in order
to ultimately provide the patient with the psychic nourishment needed. Obviously, not
all bodily felt sensations may be categorized as somatic countertransferential responses
and certainly dance/movement therapists may experience other reactions than somatic
countertransferential ones. Bernstein (1984) further elaborates:
If the sensation function is dominant in the therapist, s/he may receive the material in
the form of sensate experiences such as abdominal pressure, tension, or churning. If
the thinking function is the conduit, the somatic phenomena may translate into
concepts such as pregnancy, inner battle, or undigestable introjects. If the therapist’s
feeling function is the main vehicle of this form of communication, then s/he may feel
strong waves of emotion enter her/his body such as sadness, rage, longing, or fear. If
intuition is dominant, then symbolic images and mythic themes may emerge such as in
imaging of a person locked up in a castle with an ogre on guard or receiving a
penetrating light from a god. (p.326)

Somatic countertransference and Authentic Movement

Over the past 20 years, Authentic Movement has grown into a discipline of its own, a
“completely self-directed form in which individuals may discover a movement
pathway that offers a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious” (Haze,
1993). The discipline of Authentic Movement explores the relationship between a
mover and a witness, between being seen and seeing, and between moving and
witnessing oneself move (Adler, 1985).
According to Adler (1985), “inherent in being a person in the culture of the West is
the deep longing to be seen as we are by another. We want to be witnessed. Ultimately
we want to witness, to see another” (p.158). The development of this process depends
on one person witnessing another person move. With eyes closed, the mover focuses
186 AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT: MOVING THE BODY, MOVING THE SELF, BEING MOVED

inwardly, in an “open waiting” that Mary Starks Whitehouse (1987) describes as “an
emptiness in which something can happen” (p.53) until a movement arises from the
unconscious. Often, the experience is described as if the mover is “being moved”
(Whitehouse, 1987, p.82) rather than moving out of her/his conscious determination.
The witness “is responsible for seeing her mover as well as herself and…does not enact,
engage in her own experience; she witnesses it” (Adler, 1985, p.143). Witnessing
encompasses the ability to offer nurturance, protection, safety, and empathy. The
witness must also be able to oscillate her/his attention from the conscious and
unconscious material surfacing within, to the material presented by the mover. The
practice of witnessing is centered on being mindful of the inner world of sensations,
symbolic meanings and images, judgments and projections. Not a therapy but often a
therapeutic process, the practice of Authentic Movement, as taught by Janet Adler,
places great value on one’s own “direct” experience, freed from projections and
interpretations.
Practicing Authentic Movement is particularly helpful to dance/movement thera-
pists who want to deepen their understanding of countertransferential responses, as
this discipline focuses on the mover’s and the witness’s bodily felt experiences and
provides a forum for their discussion. Several years of commitment to this work enables
the witness to separate her/his conscious and unconscious activities and own the inner
kinesthetic, somatic, or imaginal responses elicited in relationship to the mover. Verbal-
izations of such experiences by the mover and the witness often help clarify the experi-
ence itself for both, while organizing such experiences into a meaningful framework
and establishing a strong “internal witness” for both mover and witness.
At times the witness carries a conscious understanding of the mover’s experiences
that the mover is not yet aware of (Bernstein, 1984; Dosamantes, 1992; Dosamantes-
Alperson, 1987; Dosamantes-Beaudry, 2003; Lewis, 1988). At other times, the
witness responds to the mover’s material with her/his personal, projected meaning
(Dosamantes, 1992; Dosamantes-Alperson, 1987; Dosamantes-Beaudry, 2003). Some-
times, the witness’s body is the “vessel” (Bernstein, 1984; Lewis, 1988), a receptacle for
unwanted, split-off parts of the mover’s self. At other times, the witness accesses the
transpersonal energy field created between witness and mover and partakes of the
mover’s experience in what Adler (1985) calls “union.” Samuels (1989) states, “images
pertaining to one person crop up in the experience of another person because, on the
imaginal level of reality [the mundus imaginalis], all images pertain to both” (p.170).
The witness’s body functions as a “container” in the sense elucidated by Bion
(Bion, 1983; Symington and Symington, 1996), a container which is capable of
holding anxiety and fragmentation (Bion’s beta elements) and transforms them into
manageable experiences, in a holding pattern that allows for subsequent meta-
bolization and re-integration of destructive or disavowed aspects of the mover’s self.
Or, the witness’s body may become a transformational object (Bollas, 1978) if clinical
attention can encompass and embrace the embodied experiences in which unconscious
meaning is embedded (Knoblauch, 2005).
Speaking of Authentic Movement in the context of a patient–analyst relationship,
Wyman (1992) states:
The role of the analyst is to provide a container, a tenemos to support this process [of
reflecting the patient’s inner experience]. A kinesthetic empathy develops as the
analyst allows himself to be affected on a conscious as well as unconscious level by the
 SOMATIC COUNTERTRANSFERENCE: THE THERAPIST IN RELATIONSHIP 187

emerging movement. This means that the analyst includes in his inner processing all
images, feelings and sensations that originate in his own body in response to the
patient. (p.6)
Adler (1985) sees “the dynamics of the two parties [witness and mover] as inseparably
linked” (p.144). A special bond is created between the witness and the mover. The
somatic, kinesthetic, and imaginal experiences shared within this “potential space”
(Boyer, 1993; Ogden, 1985, 1986; Schore, 2003; Winnicott, 1971; Wyman, 1992;
Wyman-McGinty, 1998) provide the mover with a deep sense of validation of her/his
own experience, validation which often precipitates further inner transformations. A
special quality of attention is created in witnessing, whereby it becomes possible to
hold personal material separate from the mover’s. Ehrenreich (1993) says, “the basic
task of the witness is to be present and provide a clear mirror in which the mover can
learn to see themselves” (p.10). MacDonald (2005) further states that “conscious
attention” needs to be paid to the dance developing in the space between the therapist
and the patient, “as it is the container for the transference and countertransference that
emerges in the therapeutic relationship” (p.14). Dosamantes-Beaudry (2003) calls
“somatic intersubjective dialogue” the therapist’s process of paying attention to “her
own bodily-felt reactions while simultaneously attending and tracking the emotional
tenor and potential meaning contained in the client’s enacted movement metaphors”
(p.77).

Case vignette
As a psychotherapist, I find the practice of Authentic Movement extremely helpful in
identifying somatic countertransferential responses when engaged in a therapeutic
relationship with patients. As Lucchi (1998) concluded in her research, authentic
movement practice deepens clinicians’ ability to be receptive to unsconcious emergent
symbolic content and increases capacity for self-awareness and self-reflection, thus
contributing to the therapeutic understanding of somatic experiences. Bollas (1987)
and Jacobs (1991) aptly describe how the analyst’s somatic memories, if attended to,
may evoke an affective experience which in turn, if noted and analyzed, may help the
analyst to tune into his patient’s affective experience and link affective states with
thoughts and words. This is the process that Wyman-McGinty (2005) explains as
necessary in order to aid patients in the transformation of their own unmentalized
experiences into conscious, fully articulated ones. To be open and receptive, waiting
for an impulse, a thought, an image, a movement to emerge, is not only the task of the
mover, but also of the witness. The witness though, Adler (1985, p.143) emphasizes,
does not “enact” or abandon herself to the emerging material, she “witnesses it” in an
ever-present, embodied detachment. Echoing Bion’s (1967, 1983) words on the need
to enter the analytic hour with “no memory or desire,” Scharff (1992) thus describes
her analytic attitude:
The analyst’s task is to face the unknown without foreclosure. At the same time, she is
willing to know without striving to know what cannot yet be known. What she
knows about the patient will depend on what she knows about herself in interaction
with other patients and family members, and on what she can learn about herself in
relation to the present patient. Understanding of the patient’s use of the object [the
analyst] and experience of the self comes from the process of being used and related to.
188 AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT: MOVING THE BODY, MOVING THE SELF, BEING MOVED

Even when the patient’s or her own defenses or anxieties make it uncomfortable for
her, she holds to the task. (pp.291–2)
The following vignette will illustrate the process of sifting through my own responses,
oscillating between cognitive and body-sensing modalities, striving to be open and
receptive to all and any of the movers’ experiences. This material is extracted from a
dance/movement therapy session, one of an ongoing series in which, as a psycho-
therapist, I apply some of the principles of Authentic Movement. In this work, the
witness is the therapist and the mover is the client or patient. The definitions in
brackets are an attempt to define this process in terms of the literature reviewed in this
paper. This vignette is offered as a map to aid the witness/therapist in her/his
reflective task. It is a process that defines and helps the witness/therapist to own
her/his material, in order to be free as much as possible of projections and judgments
in relationship to the patient. It is a process which is not meant to be fully shared with
one’s patient. The purpose of this internal work is for the therapist to be able to capture
a kernel of experience, to bring it to consciousness and render it manageable enough to
be reflected back to the patient.
As I was witnessing a group of women moving in the studio, I found myself being
annoyed by the movements and sounds of a particular mover [therapist’s neurotic
countertransference or patient’s projective identification]. Each time I glanced at
this mover, I felt increasingly annoyed. At the beginning, I tried to avoid looking at
this person by actually moving my head away from her [somatic complementary
countertransference], but this mover would come into my field of vision no
matter where I rested my eyes. I noted my kinesthetic response of avoidance
[observing ego function], and my somatic reaction of rage in the pit of my stomach
[therapist’s neurotic somatic countertransference or patient’s projective identifi-
cation]. As I questioned these inner responses [observing ego function], I asked
myself: “Why am I feeling so annoyed?” A sense of being “awkward” permeated
my body [kinesthetic empathy]. My somatic response was to shake off this
unpleasant feeling [therapist’s neurotic somatic countertransference]. Realizing
that the unpleasantness of my experience was preventing me from being present
for my witnessing [observing ego function], I decided to “stay with” the awkward-
ness [embodied somatic countertransference] and, rather than judging this mover
“awkward” [projective counteridentification], I asked myself which part of me,
which I did not recognize as my own, felt “awkward” [self-analysis]. As I looked
into myself, I discovered that part of me which feels awkward in the presence of
others. And as I then refocused my attention on the mover, I had an image of a
little girl playing with her two brothers, trying very hard to imitate them and be part
of their rough play. She did not succeed and was cast out of their playground [kin-
esthetic imagery]. I felt very alone at that moment [concordant or complementary
countertransference], as the mover reached the wall and started swinging move-
ments with her legs propped up. Tears came to my eyes as I felt a need to be
soothed [concordant somatic countertransference].
At the conclusion of this session, this particular mover spoke about her own
self-criticism regarding not “fitting in” due to the perceived rules of the group, feeling
“awkward” about herself, not ever being able to please others, and thereby be accepted
by the group. She spoke of trying to relieve herself of the rage she felt by moving
certain parts of her body. As I shared my witnessing experience of loneliness and
sadness, the mover was able to access her deep sense of being an outcast, dating back to
childhood. Tears came to her eyes as she felt the need to be accepted and soothed.
 SOMATIC COUNTERTRANSFERENCE: THE THERAPIST IN RELATIONSHIP 189

Once her experience of rage and loneliness had thus been recognized, she discovered
that she was carrying those feelings from very early scuffles with her brothers. This
insight allowed this mover to free herself from her projection that she was not a part of
the present adult group of movers.
The process of owning my own experience of awkwardness, evoked by seeing
specific movements, which in turn prompted a specific image to arise in my mind, and
linked my affective experience to a personal somatic memory, freed me to be more
receptive at a kinesthetic empathy level. Oscillating attention between my cognitive
function and unconscious bodily felt responses allowed me to make sense of my own
affective experience and to contain it, so that I could offer it (metabolized) to the mover
for her own process of re-integration of her own split-off affects. As Wyman-McGinty
(2005) states:
evoking somatic memory, authentic movement offers an opportunity to re-experience
and sort out previously undifferentiated feeling states into a more coherent narrative.
There is an opportunity to re-distribute the feeling into manageable bits which are
then available to be integrated a piece at a time. (p.269)

Conclusion
In attuning to the rhythms and body attitudes of her/his patients, creating a
“consciously receptive vessel” within (Bernstein, 1984), “embracing the early chaos
within the mover” (Adler, 1985, p.156), allowing “embodied consciousness” (Samuels,
1989) to be operative or utilizing “bodily resonance” (Nikolitsa, 2002), the
dance/movement therapist can provide a safe container in which to allow the process
of unfolding the self to take place. The ability to witness oneself while witnessing
others, as practiced in the discipline of Authentic Movement, is fundamental to sorting
out and understanding somatic countertransferential responses elicited within the
therapist in relationship to clients and patients.

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