A Primary Role for Nonverbal Communication in Psychoanalysis

International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 2011

This article presents theoretical and clinical material to show how nonverbal core affective experience is a central constituent of the sense of being and, despite a failed caregiver surround, serves throughout life as a persisting, guiding source of continuity. In the course of the article, I explicate the crucial distinction, often obscured, between felt thinking and thinking about feeling. When these two phenomena are conflated, an emotionally informed sense of being-in-the-world and, with it, the experience of emotional vulnerability is covered over with cognitive reflections about it that distance the experience and explain away the meanings embedded within.

New Jersey Journal of Communication, 1999

In this article, we explore the relariot~ship between the srudy of nonverbal communication and psvchology. The stu@ of nonverbal communication originated in the 1950's primarily as a c.ross-disciplinaty effort on ?he part of psychiatrist.^, linguists, and unrhropologists. This wasfollon~ed in rhe 1960's and 1970's by an explosion of empirical re.rearch. hooks, and popular media anemion. Itr rhe 1980's p.syr~hologists began to regularly incorporcrre nonverbal communication variables into nrM. research. Attetuiotr to nonverbal cues waned, however, as the cogt~irive revolurion gained momenrutn. It1 this decade, there is a resurgence of inrerest in nonverbal communication, particularly among those who srudy emotion, ps,vchophysiology, and person perceprion. The future of nonverbal communication may lie where ir started; as an interdisciplinaty endeavor. Psychology is defined as the scientific study of the mind and behavior (Gray, 1991). This includes how people think, communicate, and behave toward each other. The study of nonverbal communication includes communication that is effected by means other than words (Knapp & Hall, 1997) such as: posture, gesture, tone of voice, facial expression, touch, and personal space. It seems natural that nonverbal communication would be a topic of great interest and importance to psychologists. Yet the relationship between nonverbal communication research and mainstream psychology has varied greatly over the years. This article explores how the relationship between these fields has changed over time, and speculates on what might happen in the future. To some extent the history and nuances of psychology will be simplified. For the purposes of this discussion, it will not be assumed that nonverbal communication must be intentiona! in order to be considered communication.

British Journal of Psychotherapy, 1993

The most archaic levels of the psyche may not be accessible through verbal forms of expression. They are retained within the body and body-centred experiences. Pankow has developed a method of modelling with plasticine which is expressive rather than gratifying. It offers the possibility of giving form to otherwise formless areas of psychic function. We have used this method to enable patients to give form to the unexpressible layers that cannot be signified in language. In the early stages of life, sensations play an important role in the establishment of a sense of existence which is basic to a sense of self. Tustin (1986) describes these early states as a`repertoire of relatively uncoordinated sensations which are sensed rather than imagined' (p. 216). According to Freud (1923), these bodily sensations form the basis of psychic functions. The relationship between the body and psychic functions is referred to metaphorically in the psychoanalytic literature. Esther Bick (1968) speaks of`psychic skin' which prevents the dispersion of psychic objects into a boundless space and permits connections. Winnicott (1965, 1969) describes the function of`handling and holding' in which the mother gathers together all the parts of the baby, and in her hands they add up to one, forming the basis of ego integration. For Winnicott (1965),`it is only when all goes well that the person of the baby starts to be linked with the body and the body-functions, with the skin as the limiting membrane' (pp. 56-63). Bion (1967) emphasises the dynamic and organising role of`mental skin' and introduces the concepts of containment, linking and delimitation. The role of the container is not passive; rather it transforms psychic elements (1962). Anzieu (1985, 1987) refers to the`ego skin and the psychic envelope' which function as a containing and unifying envelope of the ego, a barrier that protects the mind, and a filter of exchanges and inscriptions of the first traces. Anzieu (1985) introduces the concept of`formal signifiers' as psychic representatives of`various forms of organization of the self and the ego' (p. 1). Formal signifiers are representations of psychic containers regulated by the primary process and containingè lements of an archaic psychic topography' (p. 2). The concept of formal signifiers (1987) relates to`pictograms' that Aulagnier (1975) regards as typical of the original basis of the psyche, which constitute the first step in symbolisation. So too, formal signifiers relate to what McDougall (1986) refers to as`archaic hysteria' which represents the struggle for psychic survival, often expressed in a non-symbolic manner, by somatic dysfunctioning. These metaphorical descriptions bring us into contact with the earliest and most

Forum der Psychoanalyse, 2002

Routledge eBooks, 2018

Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2019

One type of unconscious communication is conceptualized as a form of emotional communication, the channel of communication that conveys information about a person's emotional state through the nonsymbolic expression of feelings and is experienced as feeling in the receiver. Some of the analyst's feelings are attuned responses to the patient's unconscious communications; others are disjunctive and related only to the analyst's unconscious. Attuned feelings can be identified by their congruencesimilarities, consistencies, and analogies-with the patient's verbal material, which reveals the meaning that the analyst's feeling has within the patient's subjectivity. Attuned feelings also have a meaning within the analyst's subjectivity. Two cases are discussed, one in which the analyst experiences the patient's unconscious communication within the symbolism of one of her own childhood memories. The other illustrates the risk of confusing disjunctive feelings emanating from the analyst's own unconscious with unconscious communication from the patient. In 1912, Sigmund Freud enjoined the analyst to turn "his own unconscious like a receptive organ towards the transmitting unconscious of the patient" (pp. 115-116) and later suggested that thoughts linked to wishes could be transferred from one mind to another without language (Freud, 1921). But if this process exists-and many analysts (e.g., Reik, 1948) have agreed that it does-how can we know which of the analyst's thoughts have been transferred from the patient's mind into the analyst's mind, and which are simply products of the analyst's own mind? Consider the following: (a) The patient describes a childhood birthday party, and the analyst anxiously remembers an intense sexual fantasy from her childhood; (b) the analyst is filled with tenderness for a patient as he obsessively describes plans for a dinner party; and (c) the analyst feels outrageously invaded when she hears a patient talking on a cell phone in the waiting room. In this article, I propose a framework for identifying and understanding possible unconscious communications between patient and analyst. One form of unconscious communication can be conceptualized as a particular manifestation of emotional communication (Bucci, 2001), 1 the channel of communication that evolved prior to symbolic language (Darwin, 1872), and the only channel of communication available to prelinguistic infants. Emotional communication conveys information about a person's emotional state through the expression of feeling through the nonsymbolic aspects of speech, such as tone and prosody and nonsymbolic vocalizations, gestures, facial expressions, and silence. After language is acquired, emotional communication is usually intertwined with cognitive communication-the channel of communication that conveys information through symbolic language. Although both channels operate simultaneously in speech, the experience of receiving each channel is different: Cognitive communication is experienced as thought; emotional communication

Journal of Personality, 1977

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 2014

This article offers a brief, selective review of some important trends and issues in nonverbal research over the last 50 years. Although the volume and range of research have increased dramatically over that period, an adequate integration of this extensive body of work is lacking. In response to this concern, the article proposes that nonverbal communication might be framed in terms of an adaptive and efficient system of managing our social worlds. Several basic characteristics of this system are outlined and their utility in organizing and facilitating research is discussed.