Towards an interpersonal understanding of bodily experience

Abstract

This paper attempts to understand the interpersonal nature of bodily experience. It explores the way the body symptoms we meet in the consulting room, and in everyday life, express and communicate disturbances in our relationships with others. The article seeks to understand how others that are close to us can really get under our skins. The work of the philosopher of the body, MerleauPonty, findings from contemporary developmental psychology, recent psycho-biological studies and psychoanalytic insights are all drawn upon as a way of offering an introduction to contemporary developments in thinking and research on the body. The article explores the interdependence of body and environment. In particular, the body is always in an interpersonal context with others. Bodies are interdependent; communication is first and foremost bodily. Bodily behaviour and biological functions develop in the context of a relationship. The relationship with the other influences the formation of bodily processes and actions. Clinical examples are drawn upon to illustrate how interpersonal disturbances in development are expressed in bodily symptoms. The difference between a hysterical and psychosomatic body symptom is also briefly addressed.