ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a self-study which discusses a case in which he reveals awareness of his own body while treating a client that challenged his availability for being a therapist with human emotions. This brings a transparency that is refreshing and unusual in embodied psychotherapies literature. However, therapists’ self-disclosure has been extensively discussed in psychoanalytic and relational literature. It is seen as a crucial tenet of the tension between mutuality and asymmetry, which characterise relational positioning. By exploring psychoanalytic body psychotherapeutic self-disclosure, this chapter examines ways in which the therapist’s body is the vehicle through which relationship is shared with clients. The chapter presents a few types of bodily self-disclosure; passive observation (body reading), spontaneous and inadvertent somatic and motoric disclosures and resonance. The process of surrender and submission are seen as the main difference between inadvertent somatic enactment and self-disclosure (Ghent, 1990). Through theoretical discussion and clinical examples, the chapter demonstrates how the therapist’s body-awareness (or lack of) and willingness to surrender can have significant impact on the richness of therapeutic relationships and impact the psychotherapeutic act.
