Embodiment.

Summary

Groddeck proposed that the body and mind mutually express each other. This interactional view is examined from three angles: how the entire body is minded and minding, and how mindfulness shapes perception; the body as a necessary delusion anchoring us to physical reality, contrasted with Groddeck and Ferenczi's openness to telepathy and life after death; and Groddeck's psychoanalytic approach, like Buddhist meditation, revealing a flux of embodiment and disembodiment in each living moment.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Groddeck, most interestingly, proposed that the body manifested the mind, and the mind the body. I consider his interactional viewpoint from several perspectives. First, I discuss how the entire body not only is minded by and minding of all that occurs within and without, but as well how the developable capacity for mindfulness affects the perception of reality, within and without. Secondly, I consider the body as delusion, a seemingly necessary anchor into the reality of the physical world, whereas Groddeck's and Ferenczi's openness to ideas of telepathy and communication beyond death flirts with a disembodied transcendence of physicality. And third, I propose that Groddeck's psychoanalytic approach, like Buddhist meditational techniques, reveals an experiential flux of embodiment and disembodiment in each re-embodied moment of being alive.