Abstract
Reviews the book, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment by Pat Ogden and Janina Fisher (see record 2012-20081-000). Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is psychoanalytic in that its theory of pathogenesis should be agreeable to psychoanalysts who view trauma and attachment injury as central to adult psychopathology. This book provides psychoanalytic insights into the role of the body in psychopathology and references trauma theorists such as van Der Kolk, self psychologists such as Beebe, attachment theorists such as Lyons-Ruth, dissociation theorists such as Bromberg, and affective neuroscientists such as Schore and Panksepp whose work should be familiar to many psychoanalysts. However, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy recommends a treatment approach that is not primarily having a conversation that follows the flow of a patient’s free associations. It is a treatment approach that consists primarily of guided exercises that focus on increasing the patient’s self-awareness of body language and body sensation and then learning and rehearsing various behavioral adjustments designed to alter body language and bodily sensation (i.e., like altering posture, walking, or breathing). The therapeutic value of a nondirective conversational approach, increased freedom of thought and increased reflective functioning, does not necessarily have to be diluted or replaced by a more directive approach conducting structured therapist-guided exercises. With that being said, the reviewer would see this book as one more useful supplement to but not as a replacement for “talk therapy.” Those psychoanalysts that wish to help their patients replace the more addictive or compulsive somatic regulators upon which they have become pathologically dependent with more constructive somatic resources for emotion regulation can utilize Sensorimotor Psychotherapy as a valuable resource. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)