Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy

by Pat Ogden, Kekuni Minton, and Clare Pain
Forward by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.

"Hopefully, after this wonderful integration, therapy for traumatized individuals will take a giant leap forward and never be the same."
Bessel van der Kolk, author Traumatic Stress and Psychological Trauma

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 psychodynamics 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.

Contents Include:

• Top-down and Bottom-up Psychotherapy: Hierarchical Information Processing
• From Pierre Janet to the 21st Century
• The Window of Tolerance: Self-Regulation and Information Processing
• Disrupted Memory of the Future: Traumatic Orienting and Defensive Responses
• Introduction to the Clinical Practice of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
• Somatic Awareness: Body Sensation and Psychotherapy
• Working with the Organization of Experience: Tracking, Contact, and Accessing Mindfulness
• Tapping the Intelligence of the Body: Building Somatic Resources
• The Use of Touch
• A Somatic Approach to Phase Oriented Treatment
• Conclusion: Limitations and Future Directions

"Pat Ogden's outstanding work in sensorimotor psychotherapy focuses not just on the devastating effects of trauma-induced alterations on mind, but also on body and brain. Asserting that the body has been left out of the "talking cure," she offers a scholarly review of very recent advances in the trauma, neurobiology, developmental, and psychodynamic literatures that strongly suggests that bodily-based behaviors, affects, and cognitions must be brought to the forefront of the clinical encounter. Amply filled with extremely interesting case material, this gifted therapist's creative work on somatically-focused treatment is essential reading for clinicians of all schools of psychotherapy."

-Allan N. Schore, Ph.D., Dpt. of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine

"This is the book the field of psychotraumatology has been waiting for! Clinicians at last have a major practical and theoretical source for more fully understanding the central role of fixed sensorimotor patterns in survivors. Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy beautifully integrates findings from neuroscience, Pierre Janet's psychology of action, and attachment theory to explain why work with the survivor's body is essential in psychotherapy and how to do it effectively. This fascinating book is written in a language that will greatly appeal to clinicians with various theoretical backgrounds. Using the sensorimotor level as a compliment to traditional psychotherapy with its emphasis on affect and cognition, Pat Ogden and her colleagues masterfully demonstrate how to use the survivor's physical fixation in traumatic experiences as an essential avenue to effective trauma treatment."

- Onno van der Hart, PhD Professor of Psychopathology of Chronic Traumatization Department of Clinical and Health Psychology Utrecht University, The Netherlands Past President, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies

"In this pioneering work, authors Ogden, Minton and Pain describe a variety of psychosomatic approaches to traumatized individuals that, in focusing on both physical as well as psychological manifestations of the trauma, result in a more integrated healing. Therapists of all orientations will find in this volume a range of methods that will expand their capacity to offer a more embodied healing to traumatized patients. I highly recommend this work."

-Christine A. Courtois, Ph.D., psychologist in private practice, Washington, D.C., and author of Healing the Incest Wound: Adult Survivors in Therapy and Recollections of Sexual Abuse: Treatment Principles and Guidelines

Pat Ogden, Ph.D., is on the faculty of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute.
Kekuni Minton, Ph.D., is a faculty member at Naropa University.
Clare Pain, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Universities of Toronto and Western Ontario.

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 0393704572

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