With contributions from Antonello Correale, Giuseppe Craparo, Vincenzo David, Alessandra Lemma, Clara Mucci, Georg Northoff, Andrea Scalabrini, and Allan N. Schore.
Before words exist, it is gestures, gazes, and bodily resonances that give rise to a sense of self. From these first encounters emerges a web of memory and meaning that accompanies psychic life, often beyond the reach of conscious awareness. When such bonds are interrupted or traumatised, suffering no longer finds expression through language but becomes embodied – in the body itself, in symptoms, in silence. To understand and to heal these states means learning to listen to the living matter of experience, to the pre-verbal forms through which the mind communicates.
In the therapeutic field, this approach calls for a new way of being in relation. The analytic word gives way to the listening of rhythm, breath, and the emotional movement that flows between patient and analyst. The body becomes not only an object of inquiry, but also an instrument of encounter and transformation. The image that emerges is that of an embodied psyche, one that is always born in relation: there is no mind without the body, nor self without another with whom to resonate. To rediscover this truth is to restore to psychoanalysis and to the unconscious its most vital and original dimension – that of a science of the human, rooted in the living experience of bodies, emotions, sexuality, and shared presence.
Clara Mucci, PhD, is professor of psychodynamic psychology at the University of Bergamo, Italy, where she is also Director of the School of Specialization in Health Psychology. She had served as professor of English Studies (Shakespeare) until 2012. She is a licensed psychoanalyst and practices in Milan, Italy. She holds PhDs in both English Literature (Genova, 1994) and in Literature, Anthropology and Psychoanalysis (ILA, Emory University, USA, 1999) besides a PsyD in Clinical Psychology (Chieti, 2004; Milan, SIPP, 2011). She is the author of five books on Shakespeare and literary theory and in the field of psychoanalysis her major publications are: Beyond Individual and Collective Trauma (Routledge, 2013); Borderline Bodies (Norton, 2018); and Resilience and Survival (Karnac, 2022). With Giuseppe Craparo, she edited Unrepressed Unconscious, Implicit Memory and Clinical Work (Karnac, 2017). She co-edited, with Arnold Rachman, Ferenczi’s Confusion of Tongues Theory of Trauma (Routledge, 2023). She lectures extensively and gives supervision in several countries to different training institutes and mental health clinics.
Massimo Ammaniti, Psychoanalyst and Honorary Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, Sapienza University of Rome –
‘In recent years, research in the psychoanalytic field has begun to explore the multiplicity of unconscious systems, drawing – as demonstrated by this book – on Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id. In this exploration, psychoanalysis has engaged with infant research and neurobiology, as highlighted in the book’s chapters, all of which are outstanding and of great interest in their clinical and psychopathological implications for the professionals in the area of mental health. The theoretical thread that connects these contributions is that of implicit or enactive relationality, in which mind and body meet and intertwine.’
Salman Akhtar, MD, DLFAPA, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College; Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia –
‘Psychoanalytic attention to the human body has a chequered history. It ranges from the insistent primacy of body over mind and culture (à la Freud’s “anatomy is destiny”) through novel, if occasionally questionable, somatic interventions to almost total neglect of corporeal existence in the enthusiasm over psychic intersubjectivity and social constructivism. Giuseppe Craparo and Clara Mucci’s book side-steps such pitfalls. Instead, it offers a thoughtful, theoretically modern, body-oriented view not only of instincts, drives, and sensuality, but also of identity diffusion, countertransference, and role-responsive enactments in the clinical setting. This is a most useful addition to today’s psychoanalytic literature.’
Stephen W. Porges, PhD, Distinguished University Scientist; Founding Director, Kinsey Institute Traumatic Stress Research Consortium; Professor of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill –
‘Embodied Psychoanalysis is a landmark volume that unites psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and trauma studies. Bringing together leading voices, it demonstrates how the body shapes selfhood, relationships, and the therapeutic process. A vital resource for clinicians and scholars, it offers an integrative and transformative perspective on the unconscious and healing.’