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In very rare cases, individuals survive the atrocities of abduction, imprisonment and torture that are part of the hallmark of enforced disappearances. Cases of people who survive torture and seek asylum in a third country help us understand some important aspects related to the crime of enforced disappearance. In the psychotherapy of torture survivors, at an early stage and for a long time, words often do not convey the core of the patient's experience. Survivors usually have tormented bodies in which individual and collective violence, hatred, anger, guilt and shame are painfully inscribed. Corporeal countertransference becomes the only possible way for a therapist to get in touch with a survivor's experience through a kind of body-to-body communication. The centrality of the body in these therapies suggests that the body is the involuntary recipient and container of mass political atrocities and, for this reason, the place where, in the case of horrific social violence, the possibility of social "knowing" is stored and can be retrieved. Thus, when it comes to forced disappearance, the determination of the relatives to get to the truth through the discovery of the remains of their disappeared demonstrates the importance of the body as the final witness of what happened, beyond any possible manipulation., (© 2023 The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

This paper presents a preliminary sketch of what we have termed a Jungian socioanalysis - an emerging theory combining analytical psychology, complexity theories, sociological theories, socio- and psycho-analysis, group analysis and affect theories. Our assumption is that Jungian theory and practice need to attend to and focus more on social contexts, sociality and the influence of societal developments. But also, on the other hand, that analytical psychology, primarily Jung's theory of individuation and the transcendent function as well as the broad complexity perspective of his theory of psyche, can be extended to a 'socio' and not just a 'psycho' perspective. The paper presents five foundational assumptions for a Jungian socioanalysis, with the following headings: 1) A Jungian socioanalysis calls for a complex psychology; 2) (Un)consciousness is social and sociality has a dimension of (un)consciousness; 3) A Jungian socioanalysis explores social fields 'from within' by smaller groups; 4) A Jungian socioanalysis enables and is enabled by emerging metaphors and affect-imagery; 5) Socio-cultural fields have an impulse toward individuation. This is the first of two papers in the present edition of the journal - the second paper gives socio-clinical illustrations of our thesis in this paper., (© 2021, The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

This article explores how the body and imagination operate as pathways of knowledge through the use of Movement as Active Imagination in clinical practice. This method activates the transcendent function, thus encouraging new therapeutic responses. A philosophical perspective (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty) and some concepts from neuroscience (embodied cognition, somatic markers, image schema, mirror neurons, neuronal plasticity) will accompany us throughout this work, illustrated with a clinical vignette. Three levels of integration: 1) body, 2) body-emotion, 3) body-emotion-imagination are proposed: these mark a progressive sense of articulation and complexity. Finally the relation between creativity and neuronal plasticity will be considered., (© 2018, The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

The paper explores an interdisciplinary whole person approach to healing from trauma that conserves our rich inheritance from Jung but also takes on board insights from research in the areas of attachment, trauma and the neurobiology of emotion. It is now over 20 years since insights from neurobiology began to be used to inform clinical practice. The paper reviews key insights which have emerged, along with the ways they enable therapists to help mind, brain and body to heal and the ways in which they clarify why, in clinical practice, we do what we do. Traditionally the emphasis has been on words, interpretations, and meaning-making. Currently there is greater appreciation of the affective, relational, embodied aspects of therapeutic work and the way in which these relate to traumatic early interactive experience that is held outside of human awareness. The ways in which knowledge of particular systems of connectivity inform understanding of the whole mind-brain-body relationship are examined. The way forward for clinical practice to become more focused in order to help clients to heal in mind and body is reviewed., (© 2017, The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

In this paper I aim to outline the importance of working clinically with affect when treating severely traumatized patients who have a limited capacity to symbolize. These patients, who suffer the loss of maternal care early in life, require the analyst to be closely attuned to the patient's distress through use of the countertransference and with significantly less attention paid to the transference. It is questionable whether we can speak of transference when there is limited capacity to form internal representations. The analyst's relationship with the patient is not necessarily used to make interpretations but, instead, the analyst's reverie functions therapeutically to develop awareness and containment of affect, first in the analyst's mind and, later, in the patient's, so that, in time, a relationship between the patient's mind and the body, as the first object, is made. In contrast to general object-relations theories, in which the first object is considered to be the breast or the mother, Ferrari (2004) proposes that the body is the first object in the emerging mind. Once a relationship between mind and body is established, symbolization becomes possible following the formation of internal representations of affective states in the mind, where previously there were few. Using Ferrari's body-mind model, two clinical case vignettes underline the need to use the countertransference with patients who suffered chronic developmental trauma in early childhood., (© 2014, The Society of Analytical Psychology.)