A Rush to Action: Embodiment, the Analyst's Subjectivity, and the Interpersonal Experience

In this commentary on Cornell's (this issue) description of his use of the body in his analytic work with two patients, I consider what is mutative in these treatments. I use this opportunity to briefly review the parallel history of somatic and psychoanalytic therapies. Although I believe bodily experience and nonverbal forms of communication are often foundational to both subjective and interpersonal experience, I raise several concerns regarding Cornell's specific style of integrating attention to somatic experience in the context of relational psychoanalysis.