The Embodied Psychotherapist: an Exploration of the Therapists’ Somatic Phenomena within the Therapeutic Encounter

This study explores psychotherapists’ somatic experiences during the therapeutic encounter, linking these to ideas from the phenomenological school of philosophy, in particular the notion of the lived-body paradigm in relation to therapists’ physical reactions to clients. The methodology for this research evolved from 3 discussion groups, which led to a series of 14 in-depth interviews and 2 professional scrutiny discussion groups. All the participants were experienced psychotherapists. A grounded-theory analysis generated a set of first-order themes that were clustered into the second-order themes of body empathy, body as receiver, and body management. The final grounded theory of psychotherapist embodiment emerged after an analysis of the permeative themes of professional and personal discourse and researchers’ bodily responses. The grounded theory of psychotherapist embodiment has revealed the importance of the therapist’s body within the therapeutic encounter.