The Wisdom of the Body and Couple Therapy – A Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Perspective: An Interview with Pat Ogden

Abstract

Sensorimotor psychotherapy (SP) is used for the treatment of trauma and attachment challenges. It is informed by interpersonal neurobiology, trauma, and attachment research blending theory and techniques from cognitive, affective, and psychodynamic therapy with somatic interventions. In SP, the body is the target of therapeutic interventions. By bringing sensorimotor processes into awareness using both cognitive (top-down) and sensorimotor (bottom-up) processes this approach aims to interrupt autonomic somatic narratives embedded in procedural memory. These adaptive patterns can impact abilities in affect regulation and relational interactions and can sustain adaptive internal working models that may be stuck in the past, resulting from trauma and attachment inadequacies. SP utilises interventions at both the somatic and verbal level: relational proximity-seeking movements, postures, gestures, eye contact; prosody, facial expressions; verbal actions such as saying ‘no.’ These interventions can increase arousal regulation or co-regulation capacities to create change at cognitive, affective, and somatic levels. This interview with Dr Pat Ogden, PhD, explores how SP and in particular the body can be incorporated into work with couples.