ON THE INCLUSION OF CERTAIN ‘BODY EXPERIMENTS’
IN ANALYSIS
BY MARGOT CUTNER*
The following is a first attempt at describing
a method of treatment which I have been
developing for the last thirteen years. It
consists briefly of including in analysis what
I would tentatively call ‘body experiments’,
that is, an approach to the patient’s problems
through his body. The idea from which this
work started was that a patient’s neurotic
conflict as a whole, as well as any particular
phase or aspect of it, is reflected, not only in
the spontaneous symbolic expression of the
unconscious such as dreams, pictures or
phantasies, but, to the attentive observer, it
shows just as well in his body, i.e. in the
relationship between tension and relaxation of
the smallest muscles and muscle groups which
regulate the habitual as well as the passing
expression of the body, whether at rest or in
movement. One can analyse therefore the way
in which a neurosis is reflected in the body, for
instance in gait, posture, position (i.e. the way
of sitting or standing), breathing, inflexion of
voice, and almost any number of other bodily
features, and, by interpreting them, relate
them to the patient’s psychological problem
in general, and to the analytical situation in
particular. It is, of course, quite natural to
anyone to ‘read’ the emotional state of a
person from his facial expression and, up to
a point, from his characteristic movements.
But in order to decipher and retranslate into
psychological terms the ‘language’ of certain
habitual tensions, e.g. in the neck, the arms,
shoulders, abdomen or legs, and theeffect these
tensions have on everyday movements and on
the general ‘functioning’ of a person, a more
consciously directed observation is necessary.
To the patient himself all such tensions, and
* Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent.
their origin in his infantile psychological
situation as well as their effect on his present
behaviour, are unconscious and he cannot relax
them without first being made aware of them.
The purpose of the body experiments is to make
the patient aware of such tensions, and to
interpret with him their psychological signifi-
cance. When this is done the way is prepared
for relaxation to follow automatically.
As the emphasis in this kind of work is
on the interrelation between a psychological
state and its physiological expression, the work
may proceed from either the psychological or
the physiological side in order to reach the
patient’s problem. I have sometimes called
the approach through these body experiments
‘physio-analysis’, because the analysis and
interpretation of the expression of the body is
used parallel with, and in addition to, the in-
terpretation of dreams, psychological pictures,
free association or symbolism of the Active
Imagination. As there exists a practically
infinite variety of possible interrelations
between individual neurosis and body expres-
sion it is no easier to lay down rules for this
kind of work than for that of analysis. I shall,
however, try to describe as far as possible the
‘technique’ used in the body experiments and
the way in which they are correlated with other
aspects of analytical work.
I owe most of the actual body experiments
to E. Gindler, who, many years ago, in Berlin,
had developed this method. However, not
being an analyst herself she never linked her
experiments on the body with the ideas of any
analytical school. Yet, many of the assump-
tions underlying my own work were contained
implicitly in her method. There was analysis
of a kind, which was carried out in groups
but which stopped short of an explicit in-
 CERTAIN ‘BODY EXPERIMENTS’ I N ANALYSIS
terpretation of personal problems of the
unconscious.*
Whereas interpretation of certain expressive
features of the body, for instance, voice,
posture, etc., is common practice in analytical
work, detailed interpretation as well as a direct
approach to and through the body seems so
far to have been used only by W. Reich
(1948), with whose work, however, I was not
acquainted when treating the cases described
here. What he calls ‘Vegeto-Therapy’, i.e.
the interpretation of the patient’s minute
muscular tensions as ‘character-armour ’,
and his technique of dissolving them, seems
to be very similar to the method used with my
own patients and, indeed, goes far beyond it
as far as detailed theoretical foundation and
systematized correlation between body-states
and neuroses are concerned. However, im-
pressive as his work is, as an analytical
psychologist one is bound to disagree with the
‘nothing-but’ attitude of his philosophical
materialism and his rejection of the world of
the spirit. The main points of controversy
would be Reich’s theory of man’s exclusive
determination by biological and sociological
factors and the restitution of the patient’s
orgastic potency as the one and only aim of
analysis and, indeed, as the panacea for all
human problems.
It might, however, be argued that although
the central conceptions of Reich and Jung-
the ‘orgone’ and the ‘archetype’-seem to
belong to diametrically opposed ways of
thinking, yet, in practice and, as it were, against
his own theory, Reich seems to achieve
something like an equivalent to what in
Jungian terms might be called a re-establish-
ment of contact with the ‘earth-mother’,
experienced not in images of the imagination
but in the body itself.?
* As far as I know Gindler has never published
any description of her method. My knowledge of
it is based on several years’ work in her own and
some of her pupils’ groups.
t ‘Thecloseness to the mother is the same thing
as closeness to nature. The identificationof mother
and earth, or universe, has a deeper meaning when
263
In my own practice I was often able to show
how, through body experiments, archetypal
symbols, in particular those of the mother-
archetype, appeared to have been activated.
There has recently been a discussion in this
Journal of the concepts of the ‘body scheme’
or the ‘body-image’ by Clifford Scott (1949)
and R. D. Scott (1951) respectively. Perhaps
some of the observations made here might be
used in attempts to clarify these concepts. It
seems true to say that whereas R. D. Scott in
his work watches, observes and relates the
changes which the body-image undergoes in
the course of analysis, I have been trying to
work with and through the body-image itself,
and use it in the process of contacting the
unconscious of the patient. For it appears
that as a result of the interplay between body
experiments and response to them a twofold
development may take place. First, parts of
the actual body which before were ‘dead’ will
‘come alive’. Furthermore, through this
newly-won contact with the body, its arche-
typal symbolism as ‘fertile earth’, as ‘prima
materia’, as ‘mother’ will be activated, and
contents of the patient’s unconscious which
before were split off will be assimilated.
It might perhaps be said that Reich‘s work,
Gindlar’s experiments, and some of the work
on the body-image, with their common
interest in helping the patient to enter the
bounds of his own body (as R. D. Scott
expressesit), have all grown from the awareness
of the need of modern man to re-relate himself
to the ‘earth’. This awareness, as has often
been said, has not only dominated many of the
ideas of modem psychology but has also been
one of the fundamentalproblemsin philosophy
and the arts generally,finding its latest, though
perverted expression, in the cult of the ‘Blood’
of Fascism.
In the first part of this paper it will be shown
how body experiments were used in analysis
to help a borderline schizophrenic patient
with manic-depressive features to rediscover
it is understood from the point of view of the
vegetative harmony between the individual and
the world’ (Reich, 1948, p. 255).
18-2
264 MARGOT CUTNER
her body and thus t o re-establish contact with
reality. The second part begins with a somewhat
detailed description of a case of migraine and
goes on t o some briefly described instances
from other cases.
TREATMENT
OF A BORDERLINE
SCHIZOPHRENIC
History
The case was that of a young woman of 33,
married, with two children, very attractive and
intelligent. The marriage was happy, the husband
intelligent, good-looking and understanding, and
they were in very comfortable circumstances. They
lived, however, in a small and rather ‘dead’
country town, a fact which added to her difficulties.
The patient had attempted suicide twice before
the beginning of her treatment, and had strong
suicidal tendencies off and on during the early
stages of analysis. She suffered from spells of
almost complete apathy, utter exhaustion, bore-
dom and a sense of futility, during which she
retired to bed for days in succession. She would
then increasingly lose her sense of individuality
and experience a feeling of disintegration into an
accumulation of bones, teeth and brittle matter
(parched skin and dried-up eye sockets), some-
times with a sensation that a kind of beetle was
ticking away in her chestbone or in some part of her
head. In those states she would find herself staring
at objects, e.g. a picture, the ceiling or a passing
lorry, and identifying herself with them in such
a way that she could not detach her ego from them.
In her own words she ‘got stuck’ in the ceiling,
‘glued’ to the picture or she ‘merged’ into the
lorry. The clock and its ‘ticking the time away’
held a frightening fascination for her. Familiar
objects would appear strange and bewildering, and
she would find herself disorientated in her own
home and bewildered by the strangeness of doing
such a thing as cooking or even walking about, and
would question the reality of her own existence.
At times she had fantasies such as being
buried in a cave under layers of stone and
gradually turning into stone herself, or floating in
water and gradually dissolving. Her dreams
included: looking at her hands, which suddenly
turned into mice; opening a face powder compact
and finding the back of it teeming with worms;
watching a fly caught in a jelly struggling to get out,
while she herself waited fascinated for the walls of
the jelly to fall in and bury the fly.
During these periods she was devoid of any
feelings of affection, oblivious of her duties, and
often full of the most violent aggression, particu-
larly if anyone tried to rouse her from her apathy.
Hatred of her husband and children, which she
felt only at such times, was openly expressed in
words, and she was also quite capable of pushing
the children violently around.
Spells of such moods might last for several
weeks, although days spent in bed were not
usually more than three or four in succession.
Gradually she would manage to extricate herself
by methods which she had worked out herself,
which included enumerating objects, birds, flowers,
etc., to prove her mental capacity to herself;
talking to herself in an encouraging way, ‘Come
on, you can do it’; or watching herself as another
person, thinking of herself as ‘she’.
On emerging from those spells of apathy and
disintegration she would often feel very remorseful
and, as a result, plunge into wild activity, scrubbing
her house from top to bottom, cooking and baking
far more than was needed, or throwing herself into
social activities. Quite suddenly the crash would
come, often foreshadowed in dreams, and she
would sink again into apathy, with, in addition,
resentment at having to ‘slave away’ in her house,
and being a ‘social failure’, etc. These latter
reactions indicate an overlaying hysteria.
A third phase which quite frequently followed
that of apathy was marked by a mood of intense
yearning for being ‘more alive’, a phase in which
she would also produce poetic writings of beauty
and originality. In such moods she became more
and more conscious of a need for a genuine
religious experience.
She had been brought up in the Church of
England, but orthodox religion had long ceased
to mean anything to her. She was a highly
sensitive, intuitive introvert, with a gift for poetic
writing which in the course of her treatment
developed more and more towards the mystical.
Her father, for whom she had a strong and largely
unconscious love, appears to have been a very
matter-of-fact business man, of the ‘hunting,
shooting, and fishing’ type, generous and super-
ficial. He was on very good terms with her elder
sister who, like the father, seems to have been an
extravert. The mother was, in the words of the
patient’s husband, ‘most unbelievably cold and
morbid’, obviously an introvert like the patient,
but probably a thinking type. She had no say in
 CERTAIN ‘BODY EXPERIMENTS’ I N ANALYSIS 265
the family and lived in a world of her own, never patient began to occupy herself with meta-
risking her feelings, being retiring, observant and
physical, religious and even scientific problems,
inefficient,taking in a plaintive Voice, but Oftenwith considerably more than her usual very
making surprisinglywise remarks. These, however, small amount of endurance. this I en-
appeared to the children Out Of
couraged her, as it appeared to me that this
place and generally embarrassing. The patient
patient’s illness was caused largely by un-
seems always to have felt a similarity between
herself and her mother and, as she hated her recognized and unassimilated
mother, this aggravated her self-hatred which and religious questions. Thismeant that instead
originally was engendered through her father’s Of the Of libido Of
lack of interest in her. She grew up with the ideathe schizophrenic exclusively as a result
of being ‘no good at anything’ and, therefore, of regression and the patient’s symptoms
increasingly shunned effort of any kind. Instead as nothing but the result of this, I regarded
she withdrew into a world of dreams and phan- them, over and above that, as an expression of
tasies, one of her childhood phantasies being a genuine need to face certain fundamental
‘letting herself out of the window on a silver metaphysical problems, amongst them that
thread’. At puberty her father’s rather crude of the relationship of and matter as
attitude towards women, coupled with her
problems sui generis. * Thus, by acquainting
mother’s morbid prudishness, caused the patient
herself with philosophical, religious and
to develop deep-seated sexual guilt, which at !%st
sight seemed to have been dissolved through her scientific problems she began to her
happy marital relationship. This proved, however,Own painful experiences regarding mind
to have been only a surface adaptation, shame of and matter, etc-3 as closely related to those
her own body had greatlyaggravatedher early habit states of ‘~ U V C . L ~ ~ E L(fundamental
V’ wonder)
of automatically and unconsciously withdrawing which have been the starting point for all
her libido from the physical world, including metaphysical questioning throughout the ages.
her O w n body, as Soon as She came U P against As she found in this way how her own personal
the The Physical
problems were related to general problems of
world, therefore, came back on her with a mankind, they began partly to lose their
vengeance; for instance, in her fantasies of beingfrightening appearance. Previously they had
stuck in matter, consisting of nothing but matter,
set her apart from her own family and social
or dreams like the one of the fly, the living ‘airy’
thing, being caught in Being obsessed bycircle in which everyone, with the exception of
the overwhelming power of matter means at the her mother, took the world at face value in
same time being obsessed by the mother-archetype,a Particularly shallow and conventional way.
an aspect of her problem which will be referred NOW,through her new relatedness, her feeling
to below.* of isolation was counteracted and her need
for finding a n individual answer to the
,

Methods of treatment fundamental questions of life was made

Before describing the part which the body legitimate for her.
experiments played in the treatment of this Use was made in this way, too, of her
patient I should like to mention yet another
feature of some importance in the treatment * The idea that an unrecognizedbut genuine
of this case. After some time in analysis the urge for a philosophical understanding of the
metaphysical problems of life may be one of the
* Several months after she had started her basic needs of certain kinds of schizophrenics
psychological treatment Hodgkin’s Disease in its seemsto have been borne out recently by two books
initial stage was discovered. However, in the written by ex-psychotics, Peters (1949) and
opinion of the general practitioner as well as of Custance (1951). It would also correspond to
the consultant who treated her for this disease Baynes’s (1950) idea of the need of the schizo-
none of the symptoms for which she had come phrenic to create his personal ‘myth’. Cf. also
to me was caused by her glandular condition. C. G. Jung (1945), pp. 3941.
266 MARGOT CUTNER
thinking function to bridge the gap between
her overdeveloped yet largely uncontrolled
intuition and her inferior sensation function.
Or, looking at it from another angle, one
might say that, by the metaphysical approach
towards her problem she was helped to a
certain extent to disentangle herself from the
fascination of the negative mother-archetype
as seen in her phantasies of dissolving in
water, being buried in caves or stuck in
matter, etc., through the agent of the Logos,
the positive aspect of the father-archetype. In
a very primitive way she had unknowingly,
and necessarily unsuccessfully, been aiming
at the same principle by her own early attempts
at keeping herself sane by enumerating
objects, thinking of herself as ‘she’, etc.
The mother-archetype was touched upon
through the body experiments in a different
way. In her early phantasies when she had
‘glided through the window on a silver thread’
she had ‘left her body behind’. This practice
grew more and more and increasingly caused
her to lose relationship with her own body and
the object world around her. In other words
she lived almost exclusively by her intuition
function, and her sensation function was
undifferentiated. The body experiments seem
to have provided a direct way of reaching
the inferior function and bringing large parts
of it into consciousness. In accordance with
Jung’s teaching it was a problematic undertak-
ing to attempt to establish direct contact with
the inferior function, and it also proved in
this case to be not without its dangers. Yet, in
this particular form, it appears to have worked
and to have proved itself as an invaluable
safeguard against the dangers of the collective
unconscious. The balloon of the patient’s
intuition was, as it were, grounded, and the
result was an experience of unification. (This
metaphor was experienced in similar form in
several dreams and visions as noted later.)
The body experiments
By describing a rather early interview, I shall by moving had become so dominant that it
try to illustrate one of the many different ways
in which body experiments were incorporated discussed in detail at this point.
into this analysis. This interview, though
typical in certain ways, cannot be regarded as
representative of the method as a whole. Nor
can any selection of experiments quoted later
do more than give a few examples of the many
possible experiments and their connexion with
analysis. Again as each of the experiments
arose out of the momentary situation it is as
difficult to give a fully representative picture
of this work as it is to describe fully either the
happenings or the implications of an analytic
hour.
In this interview the patient was suddenly
interrupted in her complaints about a state
of disorientation and was asked not to move
but to keep in exactly her present position and
close her eyes. She was then asked to record
just what she felt, thought, or of what sensation
she was aware at that particular moment. The
first thing noticeable at that point was that she
went on talking for a long time about all sorts
of thoughts, emotions and phantasies, but
did not once mention any sense impression.
Although the fire nearly burnt the soles of her
shoes, and music intruded from another room,
she never thought it worth while to mention it.
Obviously, and significantly, she had mis-
understood the instruction. This was analysed,
and the psychological meaning of it was
discussed as far as the patient was able to
understand it at that particular moment. When
the patient involuntarily attempted to alter her
physical position which, as was usual with her,
was at the same time limp and tense,* she was
reminded not to move. Instead, she was asked
to allow herself to become aware of any
sensation of discomfort caused by this fixation
in an unsuitable position, to direct her atten-
tion to the various parts of her body which now
began to ache slightly, and to make a mental
note of them. After that she was to re-examine
her mental state with regard to the feeling of
remoteness and disorientation. By this time
the urge to relieve her uncomfortable position
* The psychological reasons for this cannot be
 CERTAIN ‘BODY EXPERIMENTS’ I N ANALYSIS
provided a (momentary) focal point for her
libido. She was now comparatively‘collected’
or concentrated, body and mind being, if only
for the moment at this early stage, linked
together. Yet, when asked which parts of her
body she was actually aware of as being ‘hers’,
or even being ‘there’ at all, she realized that
she was completely unconscious of the greater
part of her body. The only parts she was
conscious of were those that ached through
misuse in bad posture, e.g. squeezed chest and
waist, pressed thighs, drawn-up shoulders,
elbows pressed down on the arms of the chair
by far too great a weight from an overhanging
chest, etc. When the patient was eventually
allowed to move, she was asked to do this
slowly, and to remain aware of her changing
sensations.
It is important to note that a patient would
never be told in what way to change his
position, but would be asked to find out, by
way of experiment, which might be the best
possible position in which to sit. By best
possible is meant a position that will allow
the breath to flow as freely as possible and the
body to get the maximum of support from the
ground while, at the same time, supporting
itself in its bone structure in such a way as to
relieve from unnecessarytension those muscles
which are not needed in any particular
position. It usually takes patients a good deal
of time before they become sensitiveenough to
be really aware of the needs of their body at any
given moment and to be able to carry out its
demands. But even the first attempts engender
a new kind of concentration and, in this
particular case, provided a first reconnexion of
the patient with her body. At this early stage,
after moving into a better position, greater
awareness had been achieved not only of those
parts which previously ached, but the whole
of the body, feet, neck, head, etc., could now
be felt by the patient as ‘hers’.
On another occasion an experiment was
started by checking up with the patient, after
a sudden interruption, which of her limbs or
other parts of her body she was aware of at
that particular moment. At h t there was no
267
awareness at all. After some concentration
she gradually began to feel her hands as ‘hers’,
and her back and seat against the chair, again
with the emphasis on the realization of her
body as ‘hers’ and specificallynot the chair, or
the air, or the carpet. She was feeling the
carpet under her foot, but clearly distinguishing
an awareness of her foot, as foot, from the
sensation of ‘foot-touching-carpet’, etc. In
this way her ‘merging into objects’, as noted
above, could be counteracted comparatively
quickly, which proved a great comfort to her,
particularly when she was on her own, and on
the point of ‘dissolving’.*
Other sense experiments were, for instance,
consciously tasting the taste of a fruit, a thing
she had never done before, at least not to
the extent it can be done; or consciously
experiencing different materials and their
textures; or the ‘feel’ and the weight of the
body of her child, e.g. when bathing her;
or balancing herself in varying positions and
on various kinds of bases; or experiencing
consciously the sense impressions of her
cooking utensils, particularly at times when
these became ‘strange’ to her. In all those
experiments the important thing was for her
to remain completely aware of her mental
state while experimenting, and to note her
varying reactions to this process of finding
contact with the physical world of which her
own body was only one particular instance.
This was partly done by branching off into free
associationat certain points of the experiments.
In this way, amongst other things, her deep-
seated disgust complex revealed itself.
In another of the experiments the patient
was asked, while standing or walking slowly,
to ‘feel’ her feet and legs as being the funda-
ment on which the whole of her body was
resting and through which it should be
supported. Through this and similar experi-
ments the lost relationship between the body
and the ground began to reestablish itself.
* These experiments had their parallel develop-
ment in the psychological sphere where problems
of identification were dealt with about the same
time.
268 MARGOT C U T N E R
This was borne out by a dream in which she
was acutely aware of the roots of a tree. As
this and other similar reactions to body ex-
periments have shown, it seems possible to
help to bring about a general re-orienta-
tion through physical experiences like those
described. The physical experience of the body
resting on the ground and literally getting its
support from it, may translate itself into
a psychological experience of re-establishing
contact with the ‘earth’, i.e. the unconscious,
and with the inferior function and the instincts
generally. Thus there were several ‘shadow’
dreams such as one about a black, very
‘sexual’ girl, of whom the patient could see
only the legs clearly.
It appears that by such experiments in
standing, walking, balancing, etc., as well as
a great number of completely different
experiments, some of which will be mentioned
in the later parts of this paper, one can
actually reverse for the individual those ex-
periences which, in the course of human
history, have led to some of the symbolism of
language and dreams, e.g. ‘standing on one’s
own feet’, ‘coming down to earth’, etc. In
much the same way, by experiments with
touching various objects of different shapes,
preferably with closed eyes, the process that
led to expressions like ‘handling’ a situation,
or ‘coming to grips’ with something, may be
re-experienced. In this way the patient is being
led to appreciate through his own body those
fundamental human experiences, the concrete
physical origins of which we are nowadays
only dimly aware but which strike us with
such an amazing freshness when we find them
used in a symbolical way in dreams.
After about twenty months of treatment the
patient went through a period of constant and
unquenchable thirst.* The period lasted for
* At the time of her thirst period and when
this paper was written, her thirst was thought
by her doctors to be of psychological origin.
However, since then the chief consultant has
altered his opinion, and he now believes that the
thirst may well have been due-at least partially-
to her lymphadenoma. However, we must still
several months and was most painful to her
while it lasted. But it eventually proved to
be the means by which the link-up between
her mind and her body established itself. The
body, driven by thirst, asserted itself in the
most drastic way-again as ‘hers’ !--drawing
into itself, and thereby connecting itself with
(drinking) matter of the outside world.
This thirst period was initiated by a dream
in which she was offered by the analyst two
wooden bowls, half-globe shaped, full of milk.
The dream followed certain interviews in
which tasting and, particularly, breathing
experiments had given her an awareness of
being ‘provided’ with the ‘good things of this
earth’, without having to strive for them or
proving herself ‘worthy’ of them (cf. particu-
larly the rest-pause after exhaling, after which
the intake of the breath follows automatically).
After several interviews spent on breathing or
on other body experiments, combined with
free association, there were tears and a feeling
of ‘melting together’ of mind and body.
As her problem had largely been one of
under-nourishment of affection by her mother
(who, in her dreams, was usually connected ’
with the damp, humid, wormy side of the
earth), the dream of the milk bowls (bowls
standing for breasts, but pointing to the arche-
typal aspect of them) was one of those, from
a psychological point of view, dreams
expressive of some healing force within.
During the period of her thirst she had
a number of dreams and visions about water,
consider just how even a physically conditioned
symptom fits into a psychiatric picture, in what
way, for instance, the specific dream symbolism
chosen by the patient’s unconscious reveals his
individual psychological problem. In other words,
we have still to ask in what way the particular
dreams produced by the patient during her thirst
period-apart from being responses to the
physical stimulus of thirst-expressed, in their
individual symbolism,the psychologicalsituation
of the patient at that time. The fact remains that
the thirst, even though not psychogenic as was
fist supposed, was made use of in the service of
a psychological development.
 CERTAIN ‘BODY EXPERIMENTS’ I N ANALYSIS
some of which, like the milk-bowl dream, were
developed by way of active imagination. This
led her to discover the ‘wateriness’ of water,
the juiciness of grass, the freshness of morning
air, and the ‘feel’ of plants, animals and
scenery generally. Instead of gulping in-
numerable drinks, as she had done during the
first part of her thirst period, she began to
drink slowly and consciously, and sometimes
only to imagine drinking, discovering, under
the impact of her thirst, in those experiments
the physical world, and her body as part of it.
At the same time she began to read widely,
with the emphasis on everything factual. In
the same way as the body experiments had
helped her to link up the worlds of spirit
and matter within herself (making use even
of the phenomenon of thirst) they helped to
prepare a change in her general attitude
towards the material world. Whereas pre-
viously her interest was almost exclusively
caught by ‘atmosphere’, whether in literature
or in everyday experiences, she now began
to seize eagerly on scientific books of all
kinds, and to take a systematic interest in
the facts and working of the everyday world
around her. A dream of that time illustrating
this new attitude was about a bird which she
took into her hands, examining the structure
of the different layers of its feathers, turning
it round and looking closely at it from all
sides.
Some time later she dreamt of a man who,
out of a wooden bowl, fed some chickens with
grain. Particularly impressive to her were his
hands which were brown, nervy and slightly
dirty as from gardening, and very strong and
well-shaped. This animus figure, developed by
way of active imagination, was very different
from a previous one who had been climbing
a rope which, although fastened on a roof,
went straight up into space, ending nowhere.
He soon began to build his own house,
quarrying his own stones, mixing his mortar
and grinding his own paint. He developed into
a guiding figure.
About the same time there was a dream in
which the most impressive feature to her was
269
a bird swimming on the water. This dream,
as well as the bird dream just mentioned, was
in complete contrast to early dreams in which
birds came crashing down to their deaths, or
birds of prey clawing other living things, or to
a frightening early vision of an eagle flying
high above her, casting a deep shadow on dry
brown sand beneath her, while she herself was
caught by the terror of the space between the
eagle and his shadow. Another dream of this
time was about a radar post which, like a num-
ber of other symbols of this period, showed
a beginning unification and reconciliation of
above and below, spirit and matter, intuition
and sensation.
As this paper has set out to describe the part
which body experiments play in analysis, it
does not seem relevant to go into any detailed
discussion of analytical material, either on the
reductive or on the constructive level. Also,
with regard to the body experiments them-
selves only a small sector of the problems
touched upon can be mentioned here. One of
those was, for instance, the part they played in
helping her to become and remain aware of her
own individuality in her relations with other
people; another was the way in which they
helped her towards a preparatory mental state
sufficiently unified for her own creative
activity, writing, a state which she compared
to a ‘seed bed’.
During the later phases of the treatment the
main function of the body experiments had
become that of counteracting the extremes of
her three main mental states, i.e. keeping her
connected with the earth, whenever the largely
autonomous swing would tend to pull her
down into the ‘waters’ or up into the ‘air’ or
again into a state of racing extraversion.
It will be remembered that those three
states manifested themselves either in a deep
depression, with an inertia that showed almost
katatonic features, or in an elation. The latter
was often brought on very suddenly with
a dream or vision of a particularly impressive
character, and in it she would feel herself to
be deeply alive spiritually, with all feelings,
sensations and thoughts of a heightened

intensity, unknown to her in other states, and
with a feeling of being closely related to every
aspect of her inner world. She often used the
word ‘transparent’ to describe her percep-
tions of herself as well as experiences of the
outer or inner world. By this she meant that
everything pointed to an experience ‘beyond’
the obvious, which was clearly of a religious
nature, and for which she longed all the more
the closer she felt to it. At the beginning of
her treatment this state would just as suddenly
change as the first one, and would be followed
by one of hectic social activities, after which
she would collapse in complete exhaustion, and
the cycle would start again from there. Later
on the third state changed its character in that
it began as a state of concentrated energy
which went largely into an extremely efficient
way of organizing her practical activities
(household, etc.) and getting through an
enormous amount of sheer mental work
(scientific books of all kinds, creative writing,
etc.). However, after a while this stage would
fade out and merge into empty extraverted
(often social) activities, unless she stuck,
systematically, to her body experiments which
she became able to do to some extent on her
own. These were the only safeguards which
gradually extended the third state more and
more, just as they helped to keep her sane
during the second, the ‘transparent’, state.
They were also the only means by which
a certain continuity of feeling between the
different states could be achieved. For with-
out them, while she was in one state, the
feeling-memory of the two others was almost
non-existent. The body experiments, however,
linked the three ways of her existence at a level
where the physical and the psychological
seem still be be undivided, i.e. on what Reich
wouldcall the ‘plasmatic’ level. Either through
dreams or through the interpretation of her
voice (a certain hollowness), the tempo of her
speech (hectic), or the character of her respira-
tion (shallow and hurried), impending changes
were anticipated and, more often than not,
could be counteracted, softened or even
completely averted by the body experiments
LUlNCK
which to an increasing degree began to act as
a reliable safeguard when she was in the
second or third state. In the first, thedepressive
state, she was less capable of making use of
them; here she had mainly to rely on the
emergence of symbols from the unconscious
(dreams or visions) to help her towards the
turning points. However, when the corner had
been turned, the body experiments helped to
consolidate the newly won ground.
At the time of writing the treatment has not
yet been terminated, but the patient appears
mentally to be very greatly improved.
TREATMENT OF A CASE OF MIGRAINE
The next case was that of a man of 35 who had
been suffering from severe migraine since he
was about 18 years old. The attacks, which had
worsened about three years before he started
analysis, occurred about every six weeks,
sometimes even more frequently than that, and
had resisted several forms of drug treatment.
In those attacks extremely strong headaches
were preceded by visual disturbances, and
followed by utter exhaustion, lasting up to
48 hours. Sickness, which had disturbed him
at intervals ever since his childhood, often
accompanied an attack.
Other symptoms were various fears, e.g.
fear of insanity, of darkness and of intoxica-
tion. The most pronounced of his fears was of
birds, particularly delicate or injured ones.
There were also a number of obsessive traits.
This neurosis had all but cleared up after less
than a year’s analysis combined with body
experiments. When the patient had to break
the treatment off for practical reasons the
attacks of migraine had almost stopped; very
occasional ones did not last longer than half
an hour and left practically no after-effect.
(I saw him again later to check up.) The
phobias, too, had almost gone.
The patient had a very quick intellect and
a pleasing and seemingly well-balanced nature
of the extraverted type. He was happy in his
job (salesman) and with his family (married,
with children). He had a number of good
 C E R T A I N ‘BODY E X P E R I M E N T S ’ I N A N A L Y S I S
friends and had, accordingto his own account,
never experienced any difficulties in human
relationships. As a child he had suffered from
spinal tuberculosis and had spent several years
on a frame. But the restrictions of that kind of
life had left few unpleasant memories. He be-
lieved that his childhood had been most happy.
His main love and admiration had gone to
his father, whose death was closely followed
by the aggravation of the patient’s migraine.
The father seems to have been a gentle, re-
tiring and in some ways rather weak person
(possibly at times impotent), and it appeared
that the mother was the more dominating
personality. She seems to have been efficient,
of social charm and versatility. There had been
tensions in the parents’ marriage, to which
the father reacted by withdrawing into his
work.
As became increasingly clear in the course
of analysis, the patient, though his tempera-
ment was rather similar to that of his mother,
seems to have identified himself early with
his father. This identification was emphasized
when, after the father’s death, he became the
only man and main provider of the family.
Towards his mother his attitude was ambi-
valent. Unconscious admiration and a desire
to please her were shown in his dreams,
whereas consciously he was extremely critical
of her. Dreams about his father showed
admiration as well as competition, and a fear
of falling below his standards, mainly with
regard to the father’s ceaseless industry, his
generosity, and his gentleness. However, as
this latter quality clashed with the patient’s
own stronger vitality and virility, considerable
sex guilt developed. Fear of punishment
(castration), which linked itself with an early
childhood experience of a bird killed after
attacking another animal, seems to have led
to the bird phobia.
The patient’s virile temperament was in
conflict with a physical defect resulting from
his spinal tuberculosis namely, a weakness
of his legs and feet. This had led to a striving
for compensation which, on the one hand,
emnhasized his comDetitive attitude to his
27 1
father, and on the other led to an over-develop-
ment of the ‘head’, i.e. an attitude in which the
stress was almost exclusively on the rational,
conscious, intellectual or intuitive side of life,
with a dominating fear of losing control (fear
of insanity, fear of alcoholism, etc.). A con-
stant strain, causing habitual physical tension,
was the result of this attitude of competition
and over-compensation (the ‘perfectionist’
attitude typical of migraine cases).
The attacks themselves might then be under-
stood as a ‘revolt’ from the unconscious and
an attempt to force the patient out of his
strained, over-bright, over-active attitude. As
during an attack, he had to lie in a dark room
and ‘give in’ to a state of complete, though
involuntary, relaxation, one might easily
conclude that those violent revolts would
become unnecessary if the patient could learn
to relax consciously and regain a relationship
to that side of life which is in contact with the
body as a whole as opposed to that of the
‘head’.
It seems unnecessary for the purpose of this
paper to demonstrate from dreams in detail
the unconscious currents and cross-currents
of the patient-parent relationship, but it should
be said that the old unconscious competition
with his father was revived in the pattern of his
marriage. The deep gratitude which he felt
towards his wife for having married him, the
‘cripple’ and his unconsciousfear of losing her
to a healthier rival (the ‘father’), was shown
in recurring dreams of pirates, athletic sailors
or primitive chieftains, etc., who were out to
rob or rape the ‘princess’, the ‘Bishop’s
daughter’, or, simply, his wife. Only with the
greatest effort could he, in those dreams, get
the better of them. This effort, symbolizing
his ceaseless striving to prove himself worthy
of her (and equal to his father in his own eyes),
was at the bottom of his ‘perfectionist’
attitude and showed itself in his muscular
tensions.
Interpreted on what Jung calls the ‘subjec-
tive level’, dreams like those showed his
deficient relationship to his shadow and his
anima, due to his extreme extraversion, which
272 M A R G O T CUT NER
had barred him from access to his own inferior
function (sensation). This, again, would
account for his estrangement from his own
body.
Looked at from this angle the migraine
attacks could also be regarded as a rebellion
of the world of the anima against his exclusively
masculine attitude.
The body experiments
The body experiments started, as usual, in
an improvised way through a chance event.
The patient had modelled a clay figure which
he brought to the interview. It was the figure
of a naked woman carrying a rather heavy
vase over her left shoulder, somewhat above
her head. The patient was very proud of his
achievement and had never noticed that the
weight of the vase on the left was in no way
balanced by the figure’s hips and legs. No
comment was made on this, but the patient
was asked to imitate the posture of the woman
with his eyes shut (using an object of similar
shape and weight to the vase which we found
in my room). After a good deal of experi-
menting--changing the vase from side to side,
etc.-he gradually became aware of the lower
half of his own body and the balancing move-
ments of his hips as he changed the ‘vase’ from
side to side. He was then asked to look again
at the clay figure, and now suddenly noticed
what was wrong with it. It is not possible,
without going into great detail, to describe the
implications by which one becomes really
‘aware’ of any part of one’s own body, or to
relate the effects this can produce. Only a few
hints can be given here to show what happened
in this case. First, the patient, always with his
eyes closed, began to ‘feel’ his legs and their
‘carrying’ power and, for the first time since
his illness, he experienced confidence in his
legs. He began to ‘discover’ his joints and
their functions in a new way, and he began to
‘feel’ his spine as a supporting agent. With
this he gradually became conscious of the
wrong angle at which he used to hold his head
(thrust forward and upward, somewhat like
a sprinter, compensating by this involuntarily
for his habitually retracted pelvis). When
walking he had to drag his legs behind him,
with his feet stumbling just anywhere. Con-
sequently he used to dread every step, never
walked if he could help it, and had lived in
constant fear of being without his car, on
which he had become utterly dependent.
During the interviews he was asked to experi-
ment with walking, standing, sitting, etc., with
regard to finding the correct balance of his
weight. The objective of all those body experi-
ments was neither to train his muscles nor to
show him the ‘right posture’, but to let him
become aware of his legs as ‘part of himself’,
and to discover, by way of direct perception
rather than by anatomical explanation, their
structural relationship to the whole of his body,
and their functional use. The result was, first,
that his gait and posture rectified themselves,
and that he began, after a few weeks, to walk
confidently comparatively long distances,
which he could gradually extend. Secondly,
a great amount of psychological material
presented itself, which was obviously con-
nected with the experiments. For instance,
noticing the wrong angle between pelvis and
spine in standing and walking, and experi-
menting with the angle at which the pelvis
should be held,producedanumberofmemories
of childhood situations connected with shame
about erections showing while he was on the
frame. In a dream at the time of the first
experiments, he and other patients were asked
to act their dreams during an interview. In
his case this meant walking along a street
holding his penis in his hand. His embarrass-
ment at this made the connexion between the
retracted pelvis, slouching gait and sex guilt
still more obvious.
How the inferiority of his feet and his
relationship to his father influenced each other
to produce physical tensions and wrong
posture, etc., is shown in the following
dreams.
(a) He is told that he has to go back on the
frame. He wants to tell the foreman of his
garage, but finds it hard to see him alone as
 CERTAIN ‘BODY EXPERIMENTS’ I N ANALYSIS
there are many other customers about. He
then finds himself in the car, but apparently
at the same time on the frame, for he cannot
get his left foot on to the clutch. He has to
stop, thereby holding up the traffic, but
manages eventually to change gear. After that
he finds himself with his father-in-law, who
has done a number of stupid things (left the
electric iron on all night, left the window open
for the rain to come in, etc.). Next he has to go
by plane (for speed) on a certainjourney. Here
the foreman and the father-in-law represent
two father aspects. The foreman, efficient and
healthy, is hard to approach. The patient feels
inferior to and dependent on him because he
is ill again, he cannot use his feet to change
gear (associated with ‘growing up’). After
this he takes his revenge by turning the other
man, the father-in-law, into a ridiculously
inefficient specimen. His change from the
inferior to the superior position, however, does
not end there, but he now has to take a plane,
trying as usual, to compensate for his physical
deficiency by speed-‘to be there before
anybody else’. The notion of speed turns up
again and again in his dreams, sometimes
leading to crashes, sometimes as frustrated
speed. The physical expression of this was his
forward-thrust head. This he came in time to
notice and analyse for himself. *
(6) Speed is also the main motif in the
second dream. Here, in driving a car, he goes
past the red traffic lights, but cannot then go on
as a horse and cart are in the way, turning in
the road. He tries to go past them, but they
nearly back into his car. Then, at last, he goes
back to the trafficlights. When they show green
he dashes forward with extra speed and,
* In another dream he was with his father in the
car. At first the father was driving, but he was so
drunk that he could not do it properly. The patient
took over, but the father, in moving over to the
passenger’s seat, left his feet on the pedals so that
they were in the patient’s way. Again he had
difficulties in ‘changinggear’ because the father-
image was in the way. It is true, the father was
drunk and inefficient again, but he had healthy
feet, i.e. he is superior.
273
turning into a side street to the left, drives too
far over to the right side and knocks down the
signboard of a hotel. He then parks the car on
the left side and goes into the hotel to tell the
manager about the accident and to offer to pay
for it. The hotel was called the ‘Red Lion’. The
overriding of the traffic light is a symbol which
turned up several times in his dreams, meaning,
of course, his ignoring the warning signs of his
body (and mind) which would remind him of
putting a stop to his ceaseless over-activity.
After this a more drastic symbol comes up, the
horse and cart, the exceptionally slow vehicle,
the slowness and clumsiness of which is
emphasized by its turning in the street. It
almost backs into him. At this second warning
he draws back a little, only to rush all the more
afterwards. In the next part of the dream the
symbolism of ‘right ’and ‘left ’(for ‘conscious’
and ‘unconscious’) figures largely. By going
over too far to the right (not even yet heeding
the demands of the unconscious) he at last
causes the accident, and is finally forced to
park the car, this time on the left side of the
road and to pay for his foolishness. This dream
corresponds directly to that attitude of his
which finally lands him in an attack of
migraine. Only after the signboard showing
the name ‘Red Lion’ (symbol of fiery activity,
masculinity, etc.) has been knocked down
(when the migraine attack forces him to lie
flat in a darkened room) will he give in (park
the car on the left side). Having to confess to
the manager puts him again at the mercy of
a father figure.
While side by side with analysis, experi-
ments were made on walking and standing
(‘on his own feet’, etc.), he was asked to
experiment outside the interviews, with his
way of sitting and of breathing while he was
drivingthecar. He found out that he was in the
habit of sitting completely tensed up, head
forward,jaws pressed together, knees stiff, and,
generally, as if he himself, not the engine, had
to do the job of making the car go. Of course,
the more hurried he was the worse would the
tenseness become. This made driving ex-
hausting for him and he often developed
274 MARGOT CUTNER
migraine attacks before or after a longer
business trip. After a few months of experi-
menting he was able to relax consciously,
mentally and physically, when driving, so that
travelling did not cause any more attacks.
There seems to be no doubt that the fact
that many of the experiments were done with
closed eyes helped to bring about a certain
amount of introversion, so necessary in this
case. At first, however, experimenting with
his eyes closed caused a resistance typical for
the extreme extravert. In this connexion
his fear of darkness came up for analysis. This
was associated with early sex guilt, fear of his
own aggressive impulses, and with fear of
manifestations of the ‘anima’ in any form.
As he learnt to experience his body in a new
way and a gradual change took place from
rejection to acceptance of his body, the
resistance diminished and with it the fear of
darkness in general. It might be worth men-
tioning that, accordingto his own observations,
tensions which before seemed to have caused
at times abnormal sex desire, were relaxed
through body experiments. When the legs
were no longer felt to be a useless annex to the
head, and the body began to function as a
whole, tensions could be relaxed automatically
where before these could be relieved only
through intercourse.
After some time of experimenting with his
eyes shut he had the following dream. He finds
himself in the cellar of a large old house,
looking for coal. He notices a door which had
been closely fastened ‘to keep intruders out’
(the ‘shadow’). At first he is afraid to open it
as he has to stay alone in this cellar for the
whole of the night. Then he does open it and
finds several more rooms with coal in them,
but also with a number of extremely old
workman’s tools, all of which are of a type not
nowadays used and looking ‘as if it had not
been touched for years and years and years’.
He is delighted with his find and examines it,
but after a while ‘very many people come in
and are buying things, the place is now like
a big department store, and I think what a pity
it has all been disturbed’, The symbolism of
the coal cellar is obvious. Rediscovering the
old craftsmen’s tools indicates that his sensa-
tion function has been contacted. He is,
however, not yet capable of keeping the
intruders out-his extraversion is still too
dominant. He himself is a salesman, therefore
‘people buying things’ points to a disturbance
of the contact with the unconscious through
the interference of his superior function
(intuition). This disturbance has almost
vanished in one of his latest dreams, where,
after some time of great exertion and activity,
he sees an abbey at the end of a downward-
sloping road. He decides to follow an invita-
tion by the monks, and spends a few days with
them in a retreat.
SOMECHARACTERISTIC
SITUATIONS
SELECTED
FROM DIFFERENT
CASES
How the body experiments help the patient
towards a necessary introversion will also be
shown in the following example, which, like
the previous one, started from a psychological
modelling brought by the patient to the
interview.
She was a middle-aged woman teacher who
had come for treatment because of incapacity
to work, lack of concentration, weeping fits,
and difficultiesin human relations, particularly
with the staff of her school, with one of whom
she was emotionally entangled in a relation-
ship which showed homosexual traits. She
was easily dominated by anyone, but was of
great intelligence,excellentat her work (crafts),
and was of a most sincere and generous
character. Being an extraverted sensation
type, whose main function was developed at
the cost of almost all others, she had become
exceptionally dependent not only on other
people but also on ‘things’ which, if belonging
to persons in whom she was interested, took
on the character of an extension of the
personality and caused in the patient an
attitude bordering on fetishism. Masochistic
tendencies seemed to be closely connected with
the fact that she had no relationship to herself,
 CERTAIN ‘BODY EXPERIMENTS’ I N ANALYSIS
the centre of gravity being, as it were, outside
herself. As was to be expected in such a case
her problems were reflected in an exceptionally
strong transference.
One of the aims of the body experiments
with her was to help her to find the centre of
gravity within herself, in the psychological
sense as well as in a literal, i.e. physical, sense,
and through this to detach her from her
over-attachment to her surroundings.
To one particular interview she had brought
a modelled head, meant to be a self-portrait.
Most striking about it was the fact that the
back of the head was almost non-existent. She
herself was satisfied with it and had not
noticed the disproportion. Without any com-
ment on the modelling the patient was asked
to lean back in the armchair, which had a high
back, to close her eyes and to relate which parts
of her body she could feel as ‘hers’. As she
was sitting in a very tense way it was clear that
hardly any sensation of her body was present.
She was then asked to relate her thoughts and
feelings which, as usual, were completely
absorbed by transference problems, including
the chair in which she was sitting. This time,
instead of working on the transferenceproblem
from a psychological angle, she was asked to
try to discard her thoughts one after the other,
and to concentrate on the pure body sensations,
with particular regard to those parts of her
body which touched the chair. After some time
of experimenting she gradually became aware
of her own form and outline, and of the whole
of her body as something separate and different
from the chair. (Again the ‘technique’cannot
be described here in detail.) At this point she
suddenly began to notice the back of her head
which was touching the back of the chair. At
the moment of her noticing it, the muscles of
her neck and face visibly relaxed, and she
experienced a strong feeling of surprise and
relief. She was then asked to look at her
modelling and she now saw the missing back
of the head. Later she remarked that at that
moment she realized for the first time the full
extent of her previous disintegration. At the
same time that the back of her head ‘came
275
alive’ two things happened. On the one hand
she began to experience a detachment of the
back of her head from the chair, in that she
began to become conscious of the boundary
between her head as ‘hers’ and the material of
the chair. With that a first step was taken
towards severing the ‘participation mystique’
that tended to exist between herself and certain
objects. As the analyst’s chair had been
invested with a great deal of libido, this
experience paralleled the purely psychological
work on the transference. Through the
perception of her own form as ‘hers’, as well
as in the act of concentrating on her own
perceptions, she experienced something like
a flowing backward of her libido which before
had been directed almost exclusively towards
the analyst. Secondly, with the awareness of
the back of the head, the accent was shifted
from the face which, up to then, had been the
only part in which there had been any trace of
self-awareness. This meant that the accent was
shifted away from the sense organs, especially
the eyes, connecting her with the outside
world in a first attempt at the necessary
introversion. The process of detachment (and
concentration) which had begun with the
detachment of the back of her head from the
chair, gradually spread to other regions of her
body. Using mainly experiments with her
breathing, she was made to perceive the actual
weight of parts of her body. Through these she
discovered in a literal and physical way her
own ‘centre of gravity’.
The last two examples to be dealt with very
briefly are intended to show how body experi-
ments are at the same time indicative of
resistances and can help to dissolve them. In
each of these cases only one particular
point in the course of the treatment will be
mentioned.
The first case was that of a young married
woman suffering from emotional instability,
functional stomach trouble, nail biting, in-
somnia, etc. During a phase of resistance she
had a dream in which she and the analyst stood
in her kitchen by the gas stove. The analyst
276 MARGOT CUTNER
was to trap her in the room and then cause an been always under the domination of, and in
explosion by turning the gas taps on and competition with, a prettier and more intelli-
striking a match. She felt she could escape the gent elder sister, a situation which had un-
situation by keeping certain secrets which, if doubtedly contributed to her neurosis. Yet,
known, would deliver her into the analyst’s her strong and differentiated feeling as well as
hands. At that point, together with the analysis that part of her morality which was genuine
of the dream, body experiments were made and unneurotic rendered her fundamentally
which loosened the tensions in the muscles of very lovable. Body experiments with her were
the arm and shoulder, and of the feet. On mainly concerned with a systematic loosening
relaxing she re-experienced infantile impulses up oftensions, as her whole muscular apparatus
to ‘get herself into mischief’ in order ‘to was in the rigid state which goes with that
annoy mother’. She recovered memories of psychological make-up in which unconscious
her own early physical awkwardness (bumping envy, ambition, hatred and repressed sexual
into furniture, stumbling, upsetting crockery, desires are in conflict with the moral code and
losing things). All these, as the analysis in which humility, selflessness and ‘purity’
showed, were unconscious acts of aggression figure very large. Her muscular rigidity served
against the mother, and, as shown, in the not only to repress the awareness of her own
dream were relived in the transference physical needs, her hate and her aggressions,
situation. The fear of relaxing her muscular but they were also the result of an obsessional
rigidity corresponded to the fear of explosion urge to prove her own worth. To do this she
in the gas-stovedream. When, through analysis was under a constant strain to get the last ounce
and body experiments, this ‘armour’ had been of efficiency out of her body in order to excel
loosened up the new state of relaxation was at her work. The body experiments started
reflected in a dream in which ‘rain was gently from the way she was sitting on the edge of the
falling, and the air was warm and sweet’. chair, which was interpreted as a lack of
The resistance in this example seems to have confidence in her own worthiness to take up
been directed against the emergence of painful the whole seat. Loosening up the muscles of
childhoodmemories. In the followingexample her arms, the instruments of her compulsive
it was directed against the realization of a over-activity was more difficult with her than
patient’s instinctual needs. with almost any other patient, and care had
A spinster of about 50 years of age suffered to be taken not to let this become a source of
from nervous headaches, anxieties, and a new feelings of inferiority. In connexion with
diminished capacity for work owing to a tem- some experiments in which she had to lie on
porary weakness in her right arm and hand. the floor and the muscles of the back and the
This had followed a short spell of hysterical legs were the object ofrelaxation, shedeveloped
paralysis of the arm which had, however, aresistanceagainst thetreatment whichshowed
almost cleared up when she started her treat- in dreams as well as in strong tendencies to
ment with me. It had left her in a state of fear break the treatment off. However, continued
of its recurrence and had made her more and patient interpretation of the meaning of
conscious of her other disturbances. She was her tensions, of her fear of giving them up,
a children’s nurse in a private home and more eventually produced the following experience.
than fond of children. She was the kind of She dreamt that she had a child, a small baby,
self-righteous,prudish, over-conscientious and and she was breast-feeding it. At first she felt
self-sacrificing woman whose whole being great fear mixed up with her joy, but suddenly
gave the impression of frustration. She was she could let go and give herself over to the
very conscious of her lack of higher education, experience of feeding her child. She then felt
not particularly good looking, and of a rather her milk flowing, and experienced a feeling of
limited intelligence. Also she seemed to have complete happiness. This feeling stayed with
 CERTAIN ‘BODY EXPERIMENTS’ I N ANALYSIS
her for a long time after waking up, and
together with the physical sensation could be
recalled even weeks later. As, of course, it
was also connected with a faint realization of
sexual impulses it is clear why this kind of
experiencehad been warded off for a long time
by her muscular rigidity. (Cf. Reich’s thesis
that muscular armour is the same as character
armour.) About the same time she painted
a picture showing a garden in full flower. It
was done with an ease and a sensuousness
which contrasted strangely with the pedanti-
cally drawn little single cut flowers, or patterns
for cushion covers copied from dried flowers,
which she had done before.
REFERENCES
BAYNES,H. G. (1950). Analytical Psychology and
the English Mind. London: Methuen.
CUSTANCE, J. (1951). Wisdom, Madness and Folly.
London: Gollancz.
JUNG, C. G. (1945). Betiehungen zwischen dem .
Ich und dem Unbewussten.
PETERS,F. (1 949). The WorldNext Door. London :
Gollancz.
Med. Psych. XXVI
277
SUMMARY
In the preceding pages an attempt has been
made to describe how a certain kind of ‘body
experiment’ can be used inside analysis for
diagnostic as well as therapeutic purposes, in
the treatment of neuroses. Similar to Reich‘s
technique of ‘character analysis’ the ‘expres-
sion’ of bodily features is analysed and inter-
preted through those body experiments,
analogous to psychological symbolism, in
order to uncover neurotic features, and
muscular tensions are dissolved in the process.
As the result of this the healing processes
induced by analysis can, it seems, be greatly
assisted.
REICH, W. (1948). The Function of the Orgasm.
New York: Orgone Institute Press.
SCOTT,R. D. (1951). The psychology of the body
image. Brit. J. Med. Psychol. 24,254-66.
SCOTT,W. C. M. (1949). The ‘body scheme’ in
psychotherapy. Brit. J. Med. Psychol. 22,
139-5 1.
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