#8 What is a Body?

On Bodies in therapy, and elsewhere.

You’re reading The Psychoalchemist, a psychoanalytic newsletter on mundane and mystical paths to a more honest and joyful life. I write for therapists, humans, and closet witches. If that sounds like you, please subscribe.

**Today I am capitalising the word Body - in honour of that maligned, misunderstood, but essential part of us all.**

Venus combing Cupid’s hair - Giovanni Mannozzi, known as Giovanni da San Giovanni. Via the Uffizi Galleries.

Dear friends,

Psychoanalysis is sometimes referred to as a “talking cure”. Rather than take medicine, or have surgery or something else done to us, we talk; talk and talk and talk, and over time, things start to get better. It is a beautiful and real miracle, but with a strange side effect: in the glorification of talking, of thought, we often end up forgetting we have a Body - the very vessel for all this talking and all this thought, without which none of it would be possible.

As therapists, we need to be open and curious about the reality that we are together, always, each within a Body. (I acknowledge that often now, we meet virtually. I do not think this makes our Bodies any less relevant.) If we behave as though we and our patients are talking heads, not only do we miss out on valuable data, but we perpetuate a dangerous and bizarre silence around the Body, how it is perceived and carried through the world, and what it is capable of. This is not to say we should make reckless comments about our patient’s Body, or emphasise our own in overstimulating ways. Rather, we need to be in the full reality of what it means to be in a room together (or what it means to be apart, if we meet in some technology-assisted way). Everything visible, everything we do, everything we can do and choose not to, every possible act of violence, of love, of dissociation, of mistreatment, of humanity, of infection, all the things done to the Body and all the things it might do are real, and relevant, and serve us if they can be named. Bellies growl, we have things in our teeth, we can be afraid of infecting each other with illness or anxiety, we can be relieved by each other’s physical presence, we can accidentally touch or deliberately touch or never touch. In a world, and perhaps a profession, where Bodies are shrouded in shame and danger, being willing to notice all this together is no small feat.

Nymphs and Satyr (Pan) - William Bouguereau, 1873. Via: Pinterest.

We tend to ignore or even be unkind to our Bodies for many reasons, but often I think because we misunderstand what they are. The average person sees their Body as at best, a servant, and worst, an enemy with whom they are in constant competition. In reality, Body exists to reflect and empower our essence through form. Body chooses expressions that reflect information about our unconscious aspects and balances and imbalances. It is for us, illuminating our denials and traumas and fears and potential and sensuality and arousal and exhaustion and hope. Its weight and pain and lack of compliance can seem villainous to us, but this is a function of all the things it is tasked to show us about the complexity and disorder of our situations and our world, not its inherent nature. When we make our Body the enemy, we are shooting the messenger. I see Body as a mirror - an important, permanent consultant on how things are unfolding for our souls.

And yet, Body is not only a mirror and perhaps not even only inherently for us. Body is also something in its own right. When I listen quietly behind everything else, I can feel sometimes that the Body has its own intelligence, its own agenda, beyond merely reflecting the other aspects of what and who we are. My Body is mine, but also something belonging to itself, ancient cells gathered from places long forgotten from collective memory, volunteered to house this iteration of my soul, but not entirely one with it. My Body is me, and its injuries and rebellions are reflective of my unanswered questions, but it is also an environment, a something, someone, someplace, gifted to me by itself, and requiring respect that is not only my self-respect but that of a courteous guest, conscious of the generosity of their host and careful to take their muddy shoes off at the door.

Venus with an Organist and Cupid - Titian. Via: Museo del Prado.

This kind of awareness should not be weaponised into an opportunity for more guilt at what we do to our Bodies; the burden of guilt is stitched into the Body too. If anything, it might be utilised as a portal to a different kind of relationship, one in which we firstly, take responsibility for what our Body has to reflect to us about ourselves, our environment, and our relationships, and move our grief about this, rather than holding the Body responsible. Secondly, we might look again, and listen ever so quietly for what our Body might have to show us that we do not know anything of, but that belongs to its unique, separate, mysterious life. To do this, it is necessary to recognise that Body speaks a language that is not our own. It speaks not in words but atmospheres, nudges, waves, and snatches of recognition. They might be easy to ignore for a long time, or forever. To ignore them, though, is to miss a world behind our world of words, filled with rivers of flowing energy leading to dark, beautiful secrets.

In love, and the humble pursuit of a shared path to a greater truth,

Kate