It has been established that attachment relationships, most notably between parents and children, include somatosensory communication via mirror neurons. This phenomenon, which can also manifest in the therapeutic relationship, is variously described as radical empathy, resonance, and a form of projective identification. Regardless of its name, empathic attunement to somatosensory information coming from the client can serve as be a powerful conduit for information needed to help them work through dissociated memory material. Information about the client’s experience may present itself to the therapist in ways that the client may not yet recognize in themselves, and which may not be immediately obvious to the therapist without some kind of framework for recognizing, stepping back from, and contextualizing it for the client.
This presentation will draw upon the available clinical and scientific literatures to explore empathic attunement as it manifests between the client and therapist. First, existing, psychodynamic, attachment, and dissociation-aware conceptualizations will be touched upon to contextualize this phenomenon; next, the evolution of scientific research that has lent support to these theories will be summarized; then, a practical, integrative technique for recognizing, framing, and bringing to consciousness dissociated material will be described and illustrated, via case examples. Finally, a discussion of the toll that this level of ongoing, deeply-experienced empathic resonance can have upon the therapist, as well as strategies for emotional cleansing, will be offered.
This course is based on the recorded webinar, Is That Mine Or Yours Recognizing and Bringing to Consciousness the Client’s Untold Story created by D Michael Coy, MA, LICSW in 2021.
