Spring special issue: power, privilege, and difference in embodied psychotherapies

Abstract

In today’s complex social world, psychotherapists are increasingly called to address issues of social justice – in work with clients, in relationships with colleagues, and in broader personal and professional contexts. This special issue gathers innovative approaches to working with embodied experiences of oppression through body, movement, and dance psychotherapy. Articles in the collection highlight how questions of power, privilege and difference are embedded within, and enacted through, embodied encounters with clients and explore how therapists navigate their own social locations and identifications in the therapeutic relationship. The articles selected for this special include research papers, case studies, clinical reflections, and theoretical essays that help to deepen our understanding of how the body is implicated in oppressive social dynamics and how it may also serve as an essential resource in cultivating capacities for resistance, resilience, and accountability. In keeping with the scope of the journal, contributors are drawn from many countries, and from within higher education as well as clinical practice. We are particularly pleased to include authors whose voices and perspectives have historically been under-represented in the field. In Diversity and culture as psychophysiological phenomena and states of being, Tom Warnecke explores the psychophysiological phenomena associated with diversity and culture in the therapeutic relationship and considers ways to constructively engage with their complex dynamics. The author argues that while many therapists still neglect diversity and culture as key elements of client/therapist engagement, the client’s experience of feeling ‘culturally met’ seems crucial to a genuinely attuned therapeutic relationship. While body psychotherapy has begun to research the embodied experience of oppression and explore models for working somatically with the traumatic impact of oppression, the field has yet to address how somatic psychotherapy can support clients in navigating the embodied experience of internalised oppression (specifically, negative beliefs about the self which originate in oppression). In Working with internalised oppression through body psychotherapy, Rebecca Holohan presents a new theory for working clinically with internalised oppression which addresses the gap in the research by exploring how somatic awareness, sensation tracking, and somatic resourcing can support individuals in cultivating resistance and resilience.