Mentalizing the Body

Ulrich Schultz-Venrath, MD is Professor of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at the Faculty of Health, University of Witten/Herdecke. He is a neurologist (DGN), psychoanalyst (DPV, IPA), and training group analyst (D3G, EFPP, GASI), chair of the Institute of Group Analysis and Mentalizing in Groups (IGAM), and working in private practice in Cologne, Germany.

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction to a Complex Theme

1.1 Affects, Brain, and Body: The Development of an Affective Self

1.2 Attachment and the Development of a Mentalizing Self

1.3 On the Beginnings of the Mentalization Model

1.4 The Role of the Body in the Mentalization Model

1.5 Personality Disorders Without a Body?

2 The Body and Its Relationship With Physicians and Psychotherapists

2.1 Mentalizing in the Medical History, the Initial Interview, and the First Contact

2.2 The Disappearing Body in Online Video Therapies

3 The Discovery of the Body in Early Psychosomatics

3.1 Trauma as a Transdiagnostic Affect-Regulation Disorder

3.2 The Paris School of Psychosomatics – The Pioneer of the Mentalization Model

3.3 Alexithymia and/or Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

3.4 The Diagnostic Dilemma

4 Bodily or Mental States? On the Development of a Mentalizing Self

4.1 Intersubjective Developmental Conditions for a Body-Self

4.2 Body-Mode or Embodied Mentalizing?

4.3 When the Psychotherapist’s Body “Goes on Strike” or “Speaks”

4.4 Dimensions of Mentalization in Somatoform Stress Disorders

5 Somatization or Mentalization?

5.1 Prementalizing Modes

5.2 The Body-Mode – Clinical Examples

5.3 The Teleological Mode and the Body

5.4 The Equivalence Mode and the Body

5.5 The Pretend Mode and the Body

6 Mentalization Enhancement Therapy

6.1 Mentalization in Patients With Somatoform Disorders

6.2 Interactions That Do Not Promote Mentalization

6.3 Mentalizing in Group Therapies for SSD Patients

References