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6 - Time and Embodiment in the Process of Psychotherapy: A Dynamical Systems Perspective

from Part I - Body and Time: General Aspects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2020

By
Wolfgang Tschacher
Edited by
Christian Tewes  and
Giovanni Stanghellini
Christian Tewes
Affiliation:
Heidelberg University Hospital
Giovanni Stanghellini
Affiliation:
Chieti University
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Summary

In this chapter, a quantitative approach to the exploration of psychotherapy is developed. Emphasizing the significance of time and the body for this specific type of social interaction, a dynamical modeling method is sketched, which is based on high-resolution time series. Such time series must allow mapping the processes at the time scale of seconds because consciousness resides in the here-and-now, in the present moment. Such nowness constitutes the core of the social exchange between therapist and client. The demand for high sampling rates can be satisfied with the help of measures of the embodied mind – the embodiment approach has shown that mental processes are reciprocally connected to bodily variables such as body movement and physiological signals. I present an example of time series of respiratory activity measured in a sample of psychotherapy sessions, from which the nonverbal synchrony and a signature of the present moment, the social present, can be derived.

Type
Chapter
Information
Time and Body
Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches
 , pp. 104 - 116
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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