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As a psychoanalyst, I listen to people tell their personal stories through the use of words. As an audience member at a concert, I listen to musicians tell their stories through the use of music. This sometimes includes lyrics but often does not In both scenarios, I often find myself affected by strong feelings.
There is another pathway to emotion: the body.
Just think, for a minute, how you felt the last time you were embarrassed. Did you blush and feel warm? Were you ever aware of the temperature of your hands before a public performance? Chances are, they were cold. Did you stomach ever churn or did you feel your heart pounding as an important event approached? In every situation mentioned, and in many others, your body was expressing your emotions. In my work with patients, I have come to hear many stories about how they feared bodily sensations, which they feared, would become overwhelming, lead to mistakes, memory lapses, and great embarrassment.
Mrs. G. hummed a lullaby in one of her sessions with me. She said it reminded her of her grandmother who provided comfort to her as a young child when she was faced with surgery. She insisted that she felt she had serious medical problems because she was a bad girl and had done something wrong. She experienced life long issues with her body image thereafter. Our work focused on this theme of “bad girl/bad body” and how it was not related to her surgery. Most importantly, we discovered that she could have strong feelings and not be overwhelmed by them.
Mr. F. developed a pain in his arm, which was not due to any physical diagnosis. Our work uncovered that he was so afraid of experiencing anger that he unconsciously needed to have pain in his arm so he could not lash out and use his arm to hit someone in a moment of uncontrolled rage. His body expressed his inner feelings and fears about losing control. He came to learn that his feelings were cues to his internal life, which he could express through words.
Recently, I was Chair of a program at the meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association. At my event, Janet Eilber, Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company spoke about their current program called “Inner Landscapes”. As she spoke about the iconic Martha Graham’s famous statement, “movement never lies,” it became clearly apparent that there is an important dimension to the connection between body and mind. The body can, as do words and music, convey emotion and express inner life through dance.
Freud spoke of dreams when described through words as the Royal road to the unconscious knowledge of the mind. I have written about music as the Royal aural road to the unconscious. Now I’d like to suggest we think about the body as another avenue into mental life. Words, music, and the body can experience and express conflict, tension, release, ambiguity, love, rage and many other complex issues.
Check out the Martha Graham Dance Company Video Competition at:
http://onthecouchcompetition.tumblr.com/
And see how the body expresses emotion. Perhaps you will enter the contest!!
Julie Jaffee Nagel, Ph.D. is a psychologist-psychoanalyst in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is a graduate of The Juilliard School with a major in piano performance and a minor in stage fright. She is also a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. Nagel publishes and presents on the topics of performance anxiety and music and emotion. Visit her website at julienagel.net.
