Body Words and the Analyst’s Use of Self: Transforming the Unspeakable in Clinical Process

In this book, it becomes impossible to stand apart from the analytic field as abstract concepts, such as dissociation, intersubjectivity, and unconscious communication, as well as newly coined ones, like ＂Relational (K)not＂ and ＂Body Words,＂ come alive through a vivid unfolding of analytic process.

You are invited into the mind of the analyst as she draws from reverie, memory, and affect to inspire offerings that enliven the moment, moving the analytic pair forward in affective freedom and self-definition. Body Words identify the subjective linkages we make to describe experiencing within and between self and other that leads us to know whether we or our patient are delivering the message in a manner that feels real. Each chapter illustrates how Pizer arrived at this important concept and others in a way that is full of rich, experience-near clinical moments that posed significant challenges.

Body Words and the Analyst’s Use of Self is a rare window that allows readers--new and seasoned clinicians of various theoretical persuasions--to become intimate witnesses to the analyst’s subjectivity and the creativity of the analytic partnership.

Barbara Pizer, EdD, ABPP, is faculty, personal and supervising analyst, and former board member of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis; assistant clinical professor of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues; in private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.