Perspectives on Embodiment: From Symptom to Enactment and From Enactment to Sexual Misconduct

Plakun, E.M. Perspectives on Embodiment: From Symptom to Enactment and From Enactment to Sexual Misconduct. In J.P. Muller & J.G. Tillman (Eds.), The Embodied Subject: Minding the Body in Psychoanalysis (pp. 103-116). Lanham, MD: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

Analysts and therapists often work from the position of a mind-brain split, distinguishing “mind work” from the “brain work” of neurologists and from the “brain” work of general psychiatrists. However, recent developments in neuroscience underscore the ways mind and brain represent aspects of an integrated system. There is a growing body of compelling evidence for the bodily (i.e., neurophysiological or neuroanatomical) impact of psychiatric disorders and psychotherapy. It seems timely to review some of the ways bodies are more part of our “mind work” than we sometimes acknowledge.

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