Contemporary psychoanalysis has devoted so much of its attention to relational and interpersonal aspects of psychic life that questions have begun to emerge regarding the place of the body and bodily experience in our psychological worlds. Relational Perspectives on the Body addresses these questions in exemplary fashion. Contemporary relational theorists synthesize a variety of theoretical trends and influences - including feminism and postmodernism - in order to provide innovative relational models of psyche-soma integration. Throughout the book, contributors pay attention to the analysand's and the analyst's experiences as they devise original technical responses to the multifaceted ways in which bodily experiences enter into the relational matrix of psychoanalytic treatment. In the process, contributors take up subjects that are seldom addressed in the clinical literature, including breast cancer in the analyst, psychoanalytic treatment of Munchausen's Syndrome, physical deformity, and musculoskeletal back pain. The final three chapters, by Looker, Balamuth, and Anderson, respectively, grew out of a study group that continues to investigate the relationship between somatic and symbolized experience. The editors are well equipped to undertake this project. Lewis Aron is a leading relational theorist and clinical analyst, and Frances Sommer Anderson has employed a psychoanalytically informed approach to treating musculoskeletal back pain and other somatic symptoms for 18 years. The editors have enlisted original contributions from an excellent group of colleagues, placing Relational Perspectives on the Body at the forefront of the revival of interest in the body and bodily experience in psychoanalytic theory and practice.

Preface Introduction - Lewis Aron I. Relational Constructions of the Body The Clinical Body and the Reflexive Mind - Lewis Aron Psychic Envelopes and Sonorous Baths: Siting the Body in Relational Theory and Clinical Practice - Adrienne Harris Polyglot Bodies: Thinking Through the Relational - Muriel Dimen II. Linking Mind and Body The Embodiment of Desire: Relinking the BodyMind Within the Analytic Dyad - Harriet Kimble Wrye The Body-Mind: Psychopathology of Its Ownership - Linda Gunsberg and Isaac Tylim III. The Material body in the Relational Matrix Cancer as a Factitious Disorder (Munchausen Syndrome) as Related to Body Self-Image and Object Relations in a Borderline Patient - Kerstin KupfermannDissociation and Physical Difference: The Case of a "Short" Person Transformed-- Barbara K. Eisold Breast Cancer in the Analyst: Body Lessons - Barbara Pizer IV. The Place of Bodily Experience in the Psychoanalytic Process Listening to the Body: Somatic Representations of Dissociated Memory - Karen Hopenwasser "Mama, Why Don't Your Feet touch the Ground?": Staying with the Body and the Healing Moment in Psychoanalysis - Tamsin Looker Re-membering the Body: A Psychoanalytic Study of Presence and Absence of the Lived Body - Ron Balamuth Psychic Elaboration of Musculoskeletal Back Pain: Ellen's Story - Frances Sommer Anderson