Somatic Transference and

Countertransference in
Psychoanalytic Intersubjective
Dance/Movement Therapy
Irma Dosamantes-Beaudry

Since the 1950s psychoanalytic theory has undergone a significant

paradigm shift; moving from single mind, drive theories to intersubjective, relational theories that stress the co-constructed nature of
mental life and relationships. The therapeutic relationship is now
focused on the intersubjective relationships being constellated by the
patient and the therapist throughout the treatment process. This
paper presents several theoretical and clinical assumptions made by
the psychoanalytic intersubjective approach to dance/movement
therapy followed by the author. In this approach somatic and enacted
aspects of the therapeutic relationship are systematically tracked by
the therapist in order to make sense of the patients shifting self
states and relationships being enacted by the therapeutic dyad. The
treatment process of a patient who regressed to preverbal states is
presented to underscore the somatic, experiential and co-constructed
nature of the unfolding therapeutic relationship.
KEY WORDS: Somatic transference; Countertransference.
Correspondence should be directed to Irma Dosamantes-Beaudry, World Arts & Cultures
Department, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA; e-mail: irmad@
arts.ucla.edu
American Journal of Dance Therapy
Vol. 29, No. 2, December 2007
DOI: 10.1007/s10465-007-9035-6

73

2007 American Dance

Therapy Association

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Paradigm Shift Towards a Contemporary Intersubjective

Relational Perspective

ince the middle of the 20th century psychoanalytic theory has

undergone a gradual but significant paradigm shift; moving from
single mind, internally-driven theories of self development to relational,
two person and systems theories that stress the social, co-constructed
nature of mental life and relationships.
Intrapsychic determinism has gradually given way to intersubjective
contextualism (Stolorow et al., 1987). Recently Stern (2005) defined
intersubjectivity as the capacity to share, know, understand, empathize
with, feel, participate in, resonate with and enter into the lived subjective
experience of another.
In psychoanalytic treatment, transference and countertransference
relationships are considered to be central to understanding the patients
self transformative process. However, the view of the analyst as a blank
screen upon which the patient projects feelings and wishes has shifted
over time to that of two co-participants involved in a process of discovery
and co-construction centered upon the evolving patients sense of self and
self narrative (Aron, 1996). The focus of psychoanalytic treatment has
also shifted from oedipal to preoedipal psychodynamics, maternal
transference reactions and the regulation of nonverbal, bodily-based
affective self states (Stern, 1985, 2003, 2005; Schore, 1994, 2003). The
goal of psychoanalytic treatment today has become the establishment of
an intersubjective relationship with dissociated aspects of the patients
self (Bromberg, 1998).
I have two main objectives in writing this paper: (a) to trace how
psychoanalytic views of transference and countertransference relationships have shifted over time due to the influence of developmental research that revealed the intermodal, nonverbal nature of early infantcaregiver relationships, and (b) to introduce psychoanalytic intersubjective dance/movement therapy, a psychotherapeutic approach where
the therapist tracks her own and the patients nonverbal (somatic
sensory, movement and imagistic experience) as a means of understanding the patients shifting self states and intersubjective relationships being constellated during the course of the treatment process. I
have found this approach to be useful with adult patients who suffered
early self derailments and who during their treatment spontaneously
regress to preverbal self states that they originally found to be too
difficult to bear and were unable to integrate into their sense of self. To
give the reader a sense of how such treatment progresses I will present
a case that features the somatic and intersubjective experiential

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changes such a patient and I lived through during her treatment

process.

The Changing Nature of Transference--Countertransference

Relationships in Psychoanalysis
Initially Freud (1914, 1915) used the term transference to refer to the
patients reproduction of past relationships in the current relationship
established with a neutral analyst. He observed that patients tended to
repeat in treatment early pathogenic experiences that they were unable
to recall but could uncover the psychodynamic meaning such experiences
held for them in the present during their treatment. Freud (1912) suggested that analysts turn to their own unconscious like a receptive organ
towards the transmitting unconscious of their patients. But an analyst
could only do so if he were free of personal conflicts; a freedom that could
be achieved by undergoing a personal analysis. Ideally the analyst
should be a blank canvas upon which the patient could project his
innermost feelings and wishes.
Once analysts began treating patients who regressed to preverbal self
states during their treatment, they were challenged to reconsider the
nature of the transference and countertransference relationships such
patients constellated with them. For instance, Racker (1968) observed
two different types of countertransference reactions: (a) concordant
countertransference reactions in which the analyst felt compelled to
identify empathically with the patients thoughts and feelings and (b)
complementary countertransference reactions where the analyst experienced himself being transformed by the patient into an unwanted or
despised aspect of the patients self.
As the aggressive origins of some patients transference reactions
came to be recognized, Bion (1959) addressed the containing and
metabolizing functions analysts served for patients who made extensive
use of projective identification to emotionally distance themselves from
split-off aspects of themselves which they found too difficult to bear. By
contrast, Kohut (1977) focused on the positive mirroring function analysts served with patients whose sense of self was tenuous. He stated
that such patients used the analyst as a mirroring selfobject to bolster
their faltering, unstable sense of self.
In 1991, Natterson criticized the term countertransference claiming
that it was too tightly linked to the original meaning of an unconscious
pathological response by an analyst towards a patient. In his view the
therapeutic relationship involved an intersubjective dialogue in which
each participant influenced and was influenced by the other. As the

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notion of a co-constructed intersubjective dialogue gained momentum,

the focus of the evolving therapeutic relationship also began to shift towards the subjective experience of both members of the therapeutic dyad
and to the evolving relationships they constellated during treatment
involving the interplay between two differently organized subjectivities
(Dunn, 1995).
In 1997 I used the term somatic transference to refer to the somatic
reactions the patient has toward her therapist and the term somatic
countertransference, to the somatic reactions a therapist has toward her
patient at a particular moment during treatment (Dosamantes-Beaudry,
1997, p. 522). Today I use the term somatic transference to refer to the
totality of the patients bodily-felt experience and enacted behavior
(experienced as bodily-felt sensations and expressed via bodily-felt
expressive movement and through kinesthetic and kinetic images) that
function as transitional objects for the patient and provide critical relational psychodynamic meaning that at the outset of treatment is unknown to the patient.
The term transitional object was coined by Winnicott (1953). He observed that many infants between the ages of 412 months tended to
select an inanimate object from their environment that in some sensory
ways resembled their own primary caregiver (e.g., softness, warmth,
cuddliness, and particular smell). The object selected by the child possessed several other significant characteristics: (a) it was the property of
the child who used it during times when he was facing separation from
his primary caregiver to soothe or comfort himself, (b) the object chosen
became the recipient of the love as well as the hatred of the child, and (c)
when the child no longer needed it, the childs attachment to the object
ceased to exist.
A critical function served by a transitional object is that it allowed the
child to be alone when his mother was physically absent. Winnicott
(1971) noted that the site where transitional objects were created was
within the experiential intermediary zone that lay between reality and
fantasy which he metaphorically referred to as potential or transitional
space.
As humans grow up our need for transitional objects and illusionmaking continues, particularly during times of crisis. As adults we seek
to find transitional spaces that will allow us to engage in illusionmaking in order to allay our fears of the unknown, as well as to derive
the symbolic meaning such an encounter holds for us. During certain
phases in their treatment, adult patients who regress to preverbal
states may treat their therapist as though he or she were a transitional
object. That is, as an inanimate object; devoid of feelings and sense of
human agency.

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In psychoanalytic intersubjective dance/movement therapy when a

preverbally regressed patient attends to her own bodily-felt experience
and gives it outward expression through self-directed movement and
kinesthetic or kinetic imagery, she begins to generate transitional objects
that have metaphoric meaning for her. In order to make psychodynamic
sense of such transitional objects, however, the patient must be met by a
therapist who can: (a) resonate with the patients somatic experience, (b)
function as a selfobject or transitional object for the patient, (c) observe
how the patient transforms her somatic and imagistic experience into
metaphoric language, and (d) engage in a symbolic dialogue with the
patient that allows the patient to discover the psychodynamic significance her nonverbal experience holds for her (Dosamantes, 1990).

Preverbal Self Experience and Communication

Our earliest representations of our affective self experience are amodal,
concrete and psychosomatic. In 1979 Meltzoff and Borton conducted research on month old infants that demonstrated they could visually
identify complex shaped objects they had actively explored with their
mouths but never seen before. These findings led Stern (1985) to suggest
that human infants were born with an innate capacity to perceive amodally (defined as the capacity to take information received from one
sensory modality and to translate it into another sensory modality). This
insight led to his development of an intersubjective relational model of
infant-caregiver relationships that stressed the importance of early
preverbal experience. Stern (1985) maintained that the mothers capacity
to make sense of her preverbal infants subjective experience depended
upon her capacity to accurately interpret her childs internal affective
states from their intensity, rhythm and form. He suggested that mothers
needed to affectively attune themselves to their infants in order to make
sense of their infants nonverbal behavior. A major implication of
maternal affective attunement for therapists treating adult regressed
patients was that now they needed to pay attention to their patients
preverbal and nonverbal subjective experience.
In 1987 Bollas used the metaphor of unthought known to refer to the
nonverbal expressive behavior that regressed adults exhibited during
treatment whenever their sense of self became destabilized and they
spontaneously regressed to preverbal self states. He recommended that
analysts adopt an instinctual bodily knowing towards such behavior
within themselves by assuming a mothers functional attitude towards it,
and help translate it into verbal representations that might be mutually
considered.

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The concept of enactment was used by McLaughlin (1991) to refer to a

regressive, defensive interaction that occurs between patient and analyst
when each experiences his behavior to be the consequence of the behavior
of the other. Such a view of patient-therapist enacted behavior, however,
only acknowledges the defensive function that enacted behavior can
serve. By limiting the term enactment to its defensive function alone, one
excludes from consideration, the creative or regenerative function
enactments can serve when they are used to liberate patients from
constraining and limiting relational patterns that they acquired preverbally with their caregivers.
The intermodal nonverbal exchanges which infants and mothers engage in with one another, are viewed by Kumin (1996) to be a form of
presymbolic thought and nonverbal communication that continues into
adulthood and runs parallel to presentational thought and speech. I have
found that when patients convert their somatic experience into metaphoric language, they create a language for bodily-felt experience that
acts as a bridge to symbolic thought and verbal communication (Dosamantes-Alperson, 1982).
Avstreih (1981) and Naess (1982) are two dance/movement therapists
who have applied Mahlers early developmental stages in their dance/
movement therapy work with regressed adult patients (Mahler et al.,
1975). Avstreih asserts that an affectively attuned dance/movement
therapist can help create the kind of transitional space that is needed for
fresh, spontaneous affective exchanges to occur during therapy.

Psychoanalytic Resistance to Nonverbally Communicated

Experience
A major obstacle that has stood in the way of analysts being able to make
sense of their patients preverbal and nonverbal experience has been the
strong verbal bias that has existed within psychoanalysis. Geller (1978)
has pointed out that psychoanalytically oriented therapists tend to
share the belief that little in a patient changes or grows effectively that
has not come within the range of competence of language and discourse
(p. 357). This bias has persisted over the years although Freud (1905)
originally considered nonverbal behavior to be useful information which
patients were hesitant to discuss verbally because it was under less
conscious control than speech and therefore, was more likely to escape
their efforts at concealment. Later Anna Freud (1968) expressed a similar view when she stated that because preverbal experience never entered ego organization, it was more likely to be repeated in treatment as
acted out behavior.

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Though today psychoanalysts consider patients expressive nonverbal

behavior to be an integral part of psychoanalytic treatment, the focus of
psychoanalytic treatment continues to be maintained upon verbally
communicated content and the verbal interpretations made by the
therapist are still considered to be the most effective form of therapeutic
intervention. This may be due to the fact that psychoanalysts have been
trained to attend to the content of a patients speech rather than to the
form of its expression. Wilhelm Reich (1949) was the first psychoanalyst
to challenge this clinical stance when he stated that in his view the form
of expression used by a patient when communicating his experience was
far more important than the ideational content it denoted in determining
the unique nature of a patients resistances and transference reactions.
Recently Stern (2005) reiterated that intersubjectivity involves more
than a cognitive understanding of what is going on in anothers mind. It
also requires that therapists be able to perceive and address preverbal
and nonverbal aspects of the patients and own experience. To do so he
recommended that analysts empathically immerse themselves in their
patients nonverbally communicated experience.
Without the nonverbal it would be hard to achieve the empathic,
participatory, and resonating aspects of intersubjectivity. One would
only be left with a kind of pared down, neutral understanding of the
others subjective experience. One reason that this distinction is
drawn is that in many cases the analyst is consciously aware of the
content or speech while processing the nonverbal aspects out of
awareness. With an intersubjectivist perspective, a more conscious
processing by the analyst of the nonverbal is necessary (p. 80).

Psychoanalytic Intersubjective Dance/Movement Therapy

As an experienced psychoanalyst and dance/movement therapist I have
been influenced by the various theoretical perspectives of psychoanalysis
and dance/movement therapy that address developmental and psychodynamic processes involved in self construction and reconstruction. Over
the years I have evolved a way of working clinically with adult patients
who regress to preverbal states during treatment through a process of
self-discovery that directly, and actively engages them with their own
spontaneously emerging bodily-felt experience, movement and imagery.
As a dance/movement therapist who has adopted a psychoanalytic
intersubjective approach in my clinical practice, I share certain clinical
attitudes in common with verbal psychoanalytic intersubjective therapists: (a) an experiential or phenomenological listening stance towards

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my own experience and my patients experience, (b) a focus upon the

immediate or present moment, and (c) the use of my own subjective
experience to make sense of my patients experience and enacted relationships (Stern, 2003, 2005; Stolorow et al., 1987).
However, my clinical work differs from verbal intersubjective analysts
in several respects: (a) I systematically track my own somatic, bodily-felt
experience to make sense of my patients shifting self states and to
ascertain the kinds of transferential relationships we may be constellating jointly during the treatment process, (b) from the outset of treatment, patients have the option to explore their own bodily-felt experience
through spontaneous self-directed movement, emergent kinesthetic and
kinetic imagery, and words.
Mary Whitehouse (1979), a pioneer dance/movement therapist, referred to her patients spontaneous, self-directed movement as authentic
movement and to the content derived from authentic movement as
active imagination (p. 68, 70). I consider the sensations and images
that preverbally regressed patients derive from their own bodily-felt
experience to be transitional objects whose psychodynamic meaning remains to be discovered by the patient within the context of the evolving
intersubjective therapeutic relationship being jointly created by us
(Dosamantes-Beaudry, 2003).
The following case illustrates how an adult female patient accessed
preverbal aspects of her self experience that emerged during the course
of her treatment as she regressed to earlier preverbal states and modes of
relating. A more preliminary, condensed version of this case appears in
an introductory chapter I wrote about the field of dance/movement
therapy (Dosamantes-Beaudry, in press).
I first met Elizabeth when she was in her early thirties and she enrolled as a student in an introductory dance/movement therapy workshop I was conducting at a local college. This group met for ten weeks for
two-hour long sessions twice weekly. Workshop participants were provided with an open-ended movement structure that allowed them to
become acquainted with active and receptive kinds of self-directed
movement (Dosamantes-Alperson, 1979). Receptive movement is spontaneous self-directed movement that takes place while the mover is in a
receptive state of consciousness and her attention is relaxed and maintained upon her emergent internal sensations, emotions and images. By
contrast, active movement is self-directed movement that takes place
while the mover is in an active state of consciousness and her attention is
focused outwardly upon the movement interactions she forges with other
people or other external objects.
Although Elizabeth attended and participated in all workshop sessions, she almost never commented verbally upon her movement experience at the end of each session. Therefore, I was surprised that when

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81

the workshop ended, she asked me whether I would be willing to work

privately with her.

Early Phases: Elizabeth Regresses and Returns to an Early

State of Isolation
During the early phases of our dance/movement therapy work together,
Elizabeth elected to spend several weeks laying quietly on the floor while
attending to her own emergent bodily-felt sensations, and kinesthetic
images while I sat quietly down on the floor some distance away from her.
From the outset I became involved in tracking the somatic intersubjective
relationship I experienced emerging between us. Initially I sensed that
she wanted to shut me out and to return to an earlier state of being, to a
time when her emotional development had become derailed by some sort
of trauma that she could not recall nor find the proper words to describe.
During the initial phase of the dance/movement therapy process,
Elizabeth became encapsulated within a cocoon of her own creation.
Kinesthetically I experienced my stomach become distended. I felt my
womb pulsate in response to an imaginary neonate. I visualized Elizabeth as a neonate and I felt myself being transformed into a womb and a
benign maternal force whose primary function was to quietly watch over
the neonate under my care and to see to it that no harm came to it.
During this phase, I observed Elizabeth become deeply involved in a
world ruled by sensations and to be content to simply lie in the center of
her well protected cocoon.
After some time elapsed Elizabeth began to risk sharing and moving
some of her emergent visual imagery with me. These images provided me
with a clue about the disruptive kinds of early relationships that might
have contributed to her creation of the autistic encapsulated state in
which she now found herself. One day she shared the following dream
with me. Her mother had given her a beautiful gift, a diamond necklace
but instead of appreciating it and loving it (she) dreaded receiving it and
(she) experienced it as harmful. As she interacted through receptive
movement with the necklace of her dream, she discovered that it was a
beautiful diamond choker. As she proceeded to place the diamond
choker around her neck, she began to choke and found herself desperately gasping for air and for her life, unable to breathe. By actively
interacting with the necklace, the ambivalent psychodynamic meaning
contained in the beautiful diamond choker metaphor became apparent
to her. It represented her ambivalent response to her mother whom she
simultaneously experienced as enticing as well as potentially lethal. As
she laid on the floor and gasped for air I experienced my chest tighten.

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Lowewald (1980) has observed that metaphors have the power to create a
bridge between intrapsychic and interpersonal domains of experience by
generating emotional states within the listener that resonate with those
of the speaker). When I asked Elizabeth whether there was anything she
could do to ease the pressure that the necklace was exerting, she gasped
and replied no that she felt totally helpless. As she struggled to
breathe, however, she suddenly discovered that by releasing the clasp on
the back of the diamond choker, she could breathe freely again. (In that
instant, Elizabeth discovered for herself her own sense of agency and
power as an adult).
Following this movement experience, Elizabeth began to recall that
when she was an infant her mother had attempted to treat a serious
chest congestion she had by covering her head with a towel and by
placing her over a pot of boiling water which exuded a vapor that was
intended to clear up her congestion. Elizabeth experienced this event as a
terrifying one because she felt as though her mother was trying to
suffocate (her). Elizabeth then began to recall that her mother had been
very depressed and totally emotionally unavailable to her. Elizabeth also
stated that she hated having to share her mothers attention with a sister
who was only a year younger than she. The only time she seemed able to
get her mothers attention was when she became ill. In therapy, Elizabeth re-enacted her deep sense of maternal abandonment and deprivation by becoming ill with a cold just prior to my first vacation leave. When
I returned, she initially regressed to her previous self encapsulated state
for a period of time and then became verbally enraged over what she
considered to be my abandonment of her.
I listened quietly to her as she railed against me and imagined her as a
toddler having an explosive temper tantrum because her mother had left
her alone to fend for herself. When she calmed down and was able to hear
me, I pointed out that there might be a connection between her present
experience of abandonment with me and her earlier experience of
maternal abandonment by her mother. The therapeutic relationship had
survived a potential major rupture. Our transcendence of this critical
emotional storm, allowed Elizabeth to continue to experience the therapeutic relationship as a caring ambiance that could still be soothing and
useful to her. She remarked that the therapeutic relationship was not
like the one she had had with her mother but stood in sharp contrast to it.
I noticed that the affective tone of our relationship had shifted from a very
stormy, rageful one to a more pacific and soothing one.
Tustin (1990) claims that even persons who manage to function relatively well in the outside world may be compelled to create an autistic type
of auto-generated encapsulation when they prematurely experience a
bodily separation from a nursing mother. Such a separation forces them to
cope with intense feelings of emptiness, helplessness and vulnerability

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that they are not prepared to cope with effectively and instead experience
as emotionally overwhelming. As a consequence these persons turn to
their own bodily sensations as a source of comfort and protection. For
infants in this predicament, this appears to be an extremely effective
adaptation because it allows them to shut out the outside world and to
experience some sense of control over whatever happens to them.
In the phase that followed Elizabeth began to explore the autistic,
encapsulated world that she had created as a child through particular
images that emerged from her dreams and active imagination. As she
physically identified with each of these images and enacted them
through authentic, receptive movement, she became aware of the painful
toll her infantile autistic defense had exacted from her.

Working Through Phase: Enacting the Beast Within and

Transcending Omnipotence, Rage and Grandiosity
As Elizabeth became more familiar and trusting of her therapeutic
environment, she began to move aspects of herself that she often enacted
with others in the outside world, but did not experience as ego dystonic.
She rationalized what she considered to be her feelings of superiority
over others by referring to her own specialness. She mentioned that she
considered herself to be rather unique by virtue of her superior intellect
and her ability to detect other peoples motives by attending to their
nonverbal behavior. She viewed this skill to be (her) own unique gift.
When Elizabeth spoke in this fashion, I felt myself simultaneously
flattered and erased by her. While her appropriation of my nonverbal
communication skills flattered me I realized that during this time Elizabeth did not experience me at all as a distinctive and separate person
who possessed an independent sense of agency from hers. She seemed to
enjoy being merged or fused with me and the therapeutic function I was
providing for her which she characterized as that of being able to read
other peoples minds from their physical expressive behavior. By
appropriating this therapeutic function from me, she managed to blur
any semblance of separation that might exist between us. She had in
effect transformed me into an inanimate object that was under her total
control. Kohut (1984) coined the term selfobject to refer to the supportive
psychological function a therapist serves for a patient who has not yet
achieved a coherent and stable sense of self. He also used the term
transmuting internalization to refer to the process whereby patients
appropriate particular psychological attributes of their therapist in order
to bolster their own tenuous sense of self and in order to function more
effectively in the outside world (p. 99).

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Elizabeth then began to enact her sense of entitlement and omnipotence through an identification she forged with a large, black, male bear
that she had dreamt about (I took her identification with the black male
bear of her dreams to be a manifestation of those aspects of herself that
were instinctual, unknown aspects of herself that she could not yet
consciously acknowledge about herself).
As Elizabeth transformed herself into the black bear of her dreams,
she initially stood upright and then began to walk on all fours ambling
through the mountainous terrain which as the black bear she considered
to be her own domain. This bear could go anywhere he wanted to, and do
anything he pleased. Then, the bear went into a deep state of hibernation only to wake up ravenously hungry. He then proceeded to stuff
himself full of blueberries until he felt he could burst. After he had his
fill the bear decided to go into the town below to scare off some of the
people that he encountered along the way, before they could take a pot
shot at him with their rifles.
The bears awakening from a period of hibernation seemed to represent Elizabeths desire for self-resurrection and self-regeneration. The
pride that she took in her own self-sufficiency, and the ravenous hunger
the bear displayed revealed to me the extent of her narcissism and oral
deprivation. I could also see how she protected herself from potential
human harm by engaging in a form of preemptive aggression that served
to keep others at a safe distance from her.
Once Elizabeth gave vent to the bears rage by demonstrating physically the many ways in which she could strike fear in others, the bear
became more passive, playful and cuddly. The bear began to seek other
animals who lived in the same mountain. He enjoyed playing games with
other animals and allowed them to enter his turf without having to exact
some form of retribution from them. As Elizabeths rage subsided, she
began to move beyond her own self-sufficient state to explore a world
populated by human beings.
During this time, I experienced myself being transformed by her as
the mother of a toddler. I watched with fascination as Elizabeth played at
being a bear but with some concern for her physical safety. I quietly
observed her and made certain that while she was moving with her eyes
closed she would not bump herself too hard against a wall.
Elizabeths enactments of her bear dream fantasies were followed by a
physical identification with a jolly green giant who possessed more
human-like qualities. When she physically transformed herself into this
giant, she stood tall and made exaggerated large movements that allowed her to tower over anyone who came near her. However, unlike the
black bear, this creature assumed a more playful human-like form and at
times even showed some concern and empathy for the rest of the crea-

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85

tures who lived in the same town. In the outside world, Elizabeth also
began to exhibit some interest in interacting with other people.
While Elizabeths fantasy of being a jolly green giant who got
whatever he desired by overpowering others through his enormous size
and fierceness reflected a high level of narcissism on Elizabeths part,
unlike the black bear that had preceeded it, this giant had the capacity to
exhibit some form of concern and empathy for the little people who lived
in the town below.
Although Elizabeth still clung to a sense of entitlement, she now
seemed better able to manifest some interest and concern for the welfare
of others. She seemed to show some interest in the actual therapeutic
surroundings and in me. I began to experience myself being seen by her
for the first time when she took notice of the clothing and jewelry I was
wearing. Her behavior in social settings outside of the dance/movement
therapy sessions also began to parallel that of her therapeutic experience. She began to show an interest in socializing with other people and
in dating members of the opposite sex. She no longer seemed to be so
frightened of others nor so enraged by them. She now was able to put into
words what previously she had only been able to express and to enact
through imaginary transitional objects.
The nature of our intersubjective relationship also shifted dramatically towards the end of this phase. I began to envision myseIf talking to
a young adult for the first time. She and I became engaged in verbal
dialogues that seemed to be mutually gratifying. She began to show an
interest in what I said and thought. Emotionally she seemed more self
contained and better able to listen and to ponder what I was saying to
her. I experienced myself as gradually being transformed by her into a
distinctive person who could help her make sense of her internal experience through words and thereby, help her generate meaningful links
between her internal experience and her external interpersonal world.
Words now began to assume greater significance for her than her enacted
nonverbal behavior.

Termination Phase: Taking Risks and Planning for a Future

During the termination phase of her individual dance/movement therapy
sessions, Elizabeth reported becoming more interested in socializing with
others outside of the dance/movement therapy context. Apparently during this phase she began to take the risk of dating men, which entailed
making herself potentially vulnerable to rejection; something she dreaded because it forced her to re-experience the old wounds of her relationship with her depressed and unavailable mother. The fact that she

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was now willing to take the risk of rejection meant that she felt emotionally strong enough to handle whatever might transpire in her relationships with others.
She also began to make plans to continue her education. One day she
announced that she had decided to become a psychologist, and to make
use of (her) sensitivity to nonverbal experience in order to help others.
Through this action Elizabeth indicated to me that she had internalized
those qualities that initially she had admired in me but now showed some
altruistic interest in sharing with others who like herself found themselves trapped in the same infantile autistic encapsulated state in which
she had found emotional refuge as a child.
The last time I saw Elizabeth was at a professional psychology conference where she informed me that she had indeed become a psychologist. She embraced me and expressed her gratitude for having met (her)
where (she) actually live existentially (referring to the nonverbal
infantile autogenic encapsulated self state that she had been in when we
first met).

Discussion
Regression involves a return to an earlier state of being and a temporary
loss of functional autonomy. Kostler (1977) regarded the capacity to regress and to reintegrate to be a major step in the evolution of human
consciousness. He maintained that within the context of a facilitative
environment, regression to an earlier level of emotional development
tends to be followed by a new and creative reorganization of the self.
While in a state of regression patients are able to make contact with early
bodily self states, types of object relationships and modes of thinking
(Knafo, 2002). When patients undergo an involuntary regression during
therapy, they are afforded the opportunity to integrate emotional and
cognitive aspects of their self experience and relationships that previously they failed to metabolize and to integrate during earlier stages of
their self development. The transitional objects that emerge from the
patients active imagination during treatment serve as links to these
earlier derailed relationships. They allow patients the opportunity to
perceive the kinds of relational patterns they established with caregivers
in the past, to enact them as well as to redress them with the therapist in
the present.
When Kris (1952) introduced the concept of regression in the service of
the ego, he recognized the potential for regression to induce either positive or negative reactions in patients, depending upon the level of self
coherence achieved by the patient. Patients who possess a tenuous sense

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87

of self, rely upon others as selfobjects to maintain their emotional equilibrium, and fail to perceive the pretend or illusory quality of the therapeutic situation, seem to be more prone to experiencing regression as a
self destabilizing force that induces them to undergo further self fragmentation and self dissolution. Sandler and Sandler (1994) used the term
structural regression to refer to this kind of self destabilizing regression.
Marian Chace and Trudi Schoop were two pioneer dance/movement
therapists who found a way to forge an emotional, nonverbal relationship
with institutionalized psychotic patients who possessed a very tenuous
sense of self by initially mirroring their patients expressive movement
patterns. By creating shared synchronous movement patterns with their
patients that carried emotional resonance for both, they found a bodilyfelt way to communicate to their patients that their behavior was
acceptable and comprehensible (Chaiklin & Schmais, 1979; Schoop &
Mitchell, 1974).
If patients can tolerate the initial self destabilizing effects of regression, they may be able to benefit from the regenerative effects induced by
a benign regression. Such a regression affords patients the opportunity to
engage in pretend play and illusory, as if kinds of interactions with
transitional objects that they conjure up from their own active imagination. When patients return to the world of ordinary consciousness,
they return with a more enlivened, coherent and integrated sense of self
(Dosamantes, 2003). In my opinion Elizabeth underwent a benign kind of
regression that allowed her to achieve a less isolated, more coherent
sense of self. During the course of her treatment she progressed from
autistic to merged to cohesive and stable kinds of self states. When she
terminated her treatment she indicated that she had internalized aspects of the therapeutic relationship she had lacked at the outset of
treatment.
By undergoing a benign regression, Elizabeth was able to return to a
time when she had experienced a rupture in her maternal relationship.
The kinds of intersubjective relationships she established with me during her treatment, allowed her to redress aspects of her maternal relationship that had affected her capacity to establish a coherent, integrated
and empathic sense of self. Following her treatment she seemed better
able to establish mutually gratifying relationships with others in her life.
Her use of me as an illusory transitional object enabled her to internalize aspects of our relationship that she structurally needed to acquire
(e.g., the capacity to regulate her emotions, and the capacity to embue
her nonverbal experience with verbal and symbolic meaning). Once she
was able to establish mutually gratifying relationships with others in her
life, she no longer needed me to serve the various functions I had served
for her during her treatment.

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Irma Dosamantes-Beaudry

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