The following is from my Master's thesis for my clinical psychology program, entitled Hand Gestures and Somatic Manifestations: The Bridge to the Unconscious. You can see how I am entering ideas from my understanding of the Sensation method of homeopathy, combining them with the vast knowledge that has been gained in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. This is an introduction to this work, more to come later.
“A man’s states of mind are manifested, almost without exception, in the tensions and relaxations of his facial muscles, in the adaptations of his eyes, in the amount of blood in the vessels of his skin, in the modifications in his vocal apparatus and in the movements of his limbs and in particular of his hands”. (Freud cited in Sletvold, 2010)
In psychodynamic therapy the unconscious realm of the human psyche is the primary target of our investigations. Since the birth of psychoanalysis many approaches have been established to reach the unconscious, and make it available for conscious understanding and transformation. The tools psychotherapists use to achieve this goal vary greatly according to the therapist’s conceptual framework. In recent decades the importance of the body-mind connection has been increasingly emphasized, and with it a focus on understanding bodily expressions of psychic phenomenon. While various approaches have been established under the umbrella term “somatic psychology”, the “embodied analyst” is an emerging topic in the field of psychoanalysis as well. Just as the interpersonal aspects of psychoanalysis have come to the forefront in the last several decades, so too have experiential and person-centered approaches been geared towards addressing issues that arise in the here and now of interpersonal experience. In particular, experiential and person centered approaches provide a way to understand and access individuals’ inner experience through their bodily felt sensations.
My previous specialty, the Sensation Method of homeopathy heals by readjusting the core of the ailment, the deep seated imbalance, through identifying core bodily sensations in the person. Having experience in working with individuals in this modality, I know that the body expresses itself in rich ways that go beyond the narrow expression of the spoken word (Ran & Menyhert, 2007). Beside the main body of information that comes through a verbal narrative, homeopaths pay attention to clients’ bodily symptoms, their body language, the tone of their voice, their hand gestures, and even bodily reactions to their own instinctual art work, or doodling, and free associations.
This paper is an initial exploration of several authors’ and clinicians’ contributions to the field of psychotherapy where the goal is to find the layer of the unconscious that has meaningful clues to one’s emotional, mental, and physical pain. Through exploring body language, more specifically hand gestures, we can find ways to approach, locate, and understand unconscious material which is not readily available for verbal expression. Through studying the significance of hand gestures we can learn about the deeper layers of the psyche and we can explore connections that without this tool would be unavailable. The hypothesis that clients’ hand gestures are meaningful tools that help us reach the unconscious is not a new idea but the specific use of hand gestures in the context that is explored in this paper is a combined and enhanced understanding from previous authors.
