The mind-body relationship in psychotherapy: grounded cognition as an explanatory framework

Abstract

As a discipline, psychology is defined by its location in the ambiguous space between mind and body, but theories underpinning the application of psychology in psychotherapy are largely silent on this fundamental metaphysical issue. This is a remarkable state of affairs, given that psychotherapy is typically a real-time meeting between two embodied agents, with the goal of facilitating behavior change in one party. The overarching aim of this paper is to problematize the mind–body relationship in psychotherapy in the service of encouraging advances in theory and practice. The paper briefly explores various psychotherapeutic approaches to help explicate relationships between mind and body from these perspectives. Themes arising from this analysis include a tendency toward dualism (separation of mind and body from the conceptualization of human functioning), exclusivism (elimination of either mind or body from the conceptualization of human functioning), or mind–body monism (conceptualization of mind and body as a single, holistic system). We conclude that the literature, as a whole, does not demonstrate consensus, regarding the relationship between mind and body in psychotherapy. We then introduce a contemporary, holistic, psychological conceptualization of the relationship between mind and body, and argue for its potential utility as an organizing framework for psychotherapeutic theory and practice. The holistic approach we explore, “grounded cognition,” arises from a long philosophical tradition, is influential in current cognitive science, and presents a coherent empirically testable framework integrating subjective and objective perspectives. Finally, we demonstrate how this “grounded cognition” perspective might lead to advances in the theory and practice of psychotherapy.

Embodied Cognition and the Direct Induction of Affect as a Compliment to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

“…Furthermore, according to significant findings in embodiment research [46,47,48] the reverse direction of effect also applies in the sandwich model. The bidirectionality principle of embodiment theory suggests that movement and body interaction are comprised of basic sense-making with afferent feedback loops to emotional and cognitive levels [49,50].…”

“…EFT has acquired some scientific grounding in several empirical studies [46,86] and is considered an empirically validated treatment for depression, couples’ therapy as well as other disorders [45,47,48,51,87,88,89,90]. In recent years, the trans-diagnostic topic of emotion regulation has become increasingly important.…”

Do I have a self? (and other useful questions from Buddhist mindfulness)

“…In Buddhist MBIs, this 'addictive misunderstanding' is introduced to the trainee via mindfulness meditation and direct instruction, leading to potentially beneficial insights: Shonin and Van Gordon, 2014) At the level of theory, then, Buddhist MBIs continue the trajectory of 'third wave' psychotherapies away from 'second wave' cognitive behavioural therapies, in which the cognising self is a pivotal construct. It is noteworthy that a number of older Western psychotherapies also deconstruct or minimise the conventional self: Gestalt therapies privilege present experience over elaborated self-narratives, and body psychotherapies view mind, body and environment as interpenetrant (Leitan and Murray, 2014).…”

Infants in Control: Prospective Motor Control and Executive Functions in Action Development

“…Additionally, embodied cognition approaches differ in the field of origin respectively in their main area of interest, such as language (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980a), metaphors (Gottwald, Elsner, & Pollatos, 2015), perception and action (Gentsch, Weber, Synofzik, Vosgerau, & Schütz-Bosbach, 2016), memory (Glenberg, 1997), artificial intelligence (Brooks, 1999), psychotherapy (Leitan & Murray, 2014), psychoanalysis (Buchholz, 2007;Sletvold, 2013), and philosophy (Merleau-Ponty, 1962).…”