Re-enacting the Bodily Self on Stage: Embodied Cognition Meets Psychoanalysis

Abstract

The embodied approach to cognition consists in a range of theoretical proposals sharing the idea that our concepts are constitutively shaped by the physical and social constraints of our body and environment. Still far from a mutually enriching interplay, in recent years embodied and psychoanalytic approaches are converging on similar constructs as the ones of intersubjectivity, bodily self, and affective quality of verbal communication. Some efforts to cope with the sentient subject were already present in classical cognitivism: having expunged desires and conflicts from the cognitive harmony , bodily emotions re-emerged but only as a noisy dynamic friction. In contrast, the new, neural, embodied cognitive science with its focus on bodily effects/affects has enabled a dialogue between neuro-cognitive perspectives and clinic-psychological ones, through shared conceptual frameworks. I will address crucial issues that should be faced on this reconciling path. With reference to two kinds of contemporary addictions – internet addiction disorder and eating disorders – I will introduce a possible therapeutic approach that is built upon the core role of the acting-sentient bodily self in a dynamic-social and affective environment. In Psychoanalytic Psychodrama, the spontaneous re-enactment of a past (socially and physically constrained) experience is actualized by means of the other, the Auxiliary Ego. This allows homeostatic and social-emotional affects, i.e., drives and instincts, to be re-experienced by the agent, the Protagonist, in a safe scenario. The director-psychoanalyst smoothly traces back this simulation to the motivated, and constrained, early proximal embodied interactions with significant others, and to the related instinctual conflicting aims. The psychoanalytic reframing of classical psychodrama does not merely exploit its original cathartic function, rather stands out for exploring the interpersonal constitution of the self, through an actual “re-somatization” of psychoanalytic therapy. Unspoken/unspeakable feelings pop up on stage: the strength of this treatment mainly rests on re-establishing the priority of the embodied Self over the narrative Self . By pointing out the possible conflicts between these two selves, this method can broaden the embodied cognition perspective. The psychodramatic approach will be briefly discussed in light of connectionist models, to finally address linguistic and methodological pivotal issues.

Reconstructing Personal Stories in Virtual Reality as a Mechanism to Recover the Self

“…For example, such a stance toward one's life story could help a person suffering from trauma step out of the traumatic story and not identify with their image (protagonist) of a broken self, with the purpose of recreating the story of the past into a more meaningful story (as a narrator) or creating a new narrative for the protagonist to keep track of their life story in a new paradigm (as suggested in Figure 2) [157].…”

When Affective Relation Weighs More Than the Mug Handle: Investigating Affective Affordances

“…Enactive and embodied approaches to cognition are becoming increasingly interested in the affective dimension of human experience (Varela and Depraz, 2005 ; Colombetti, 2007 , 2014 ; Colombetti and Thompson, 2008 ; Di Paolo and De Jaegher, 2015 ; Gallagher and Varga, 2015 ; Gallagher and Allen, 2016 ; Scorolli, 2019 ). Consistently, this issue has been addressed in empirical research, which is paying growing attention to the affective quality of social contexts by addressing motor simulations (Bastiaansen et al, 2009 ; Kuhbandner et al, 2010 ), joint actions (Godman, 2013 ; Pesquita et al, 2018 ), emotional disorders (Gjelsvik et al, 2018 ), and body psychotherapy (Röhricht et al, 2014 ).…”