BodyDreaming in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: An Embodied Therapeutic Approach

Winner of the NAAP 2019 Gradiva® Award! Winner of the IAJS Book Award for Best Book published in 2019! Marian Dunlea’s BodyDreaming in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: An Embodied Therapeutic Approach provides a theoretical and practical guide for working with early developmental trauma. This interdisciplinary approach explores the interconnection of body, mind and psyche, offering a masterful tool for restoring balance and healing developmental trauma. BodyDreaming is a somatically focused therapeutic method, drawing on the findings of neuroscience, analytical psychology, attachment theory and trauma therapy. In Part I, Dunlea defines BodyDreaming and its origins, placing it in the context of a dysregulated contemporary world. Part II explains how the brain works in relation to the BodyDreaming approach: providing an accessible outline of neuroscientific theory, structures and neuroanatomy in attunement, affect regulation, attachment patterns, transference and countertransference, and the resolution of trauma throughout the body. In Part III, through detailed transcripts from sessions with clients, Dunlea demonstrates the positive impact of BodyDreaming on attachment patterns and developmental trauma. This somatic approach complements and enhances psychobiological, developmental and psychoanalytic interventions. BodyDreaming restores balance to a dysregulated psyche and nervous system that activates our innate capacity for healing, changing our default response of "fight, flight or freeze" and creating new neural pathways. Dunlea’s emphasis on attunement to build a restorative relationship with the sensing body creates a core sense of self, providing a secure base for healing developmental trauma. Innovative and practical, and with a foreword by Donald E. Kalsched, BodyDreaming in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: An Embodied Therapeutic Approach will be essential reading for psychotherapists, analytical psychologists and therapists with a Jungian background, arts therapists, dance and movement therapists, and body workers interested in learning how to work with both body and psyche in their practices.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements; Foreword by E. Donald Kalsched; Credits and Permissions; Part I: Setting the Scene; A Note to the Reader: How This Book Works; Introducing BodyDreaming; Why This Book Now: The Origins of BodyDreaming; Invitation to the Reader to Engage Experientially with the Text; The Black Pearl; Part II: Neuroscientific Background; Chapter One: How the Brain Works : A Brief Outline of the Neuroscientific Theory That Informs BodyDreaming; Part III: BodyDreaming in Clinical Practice; Chapter Two: Orienting, Regulating, Resourcing: “I may be able to find some peace here”; Chapter Three: Working the Threshold: “Slowly, slowly . . . 1%” ; Chapter Four: Attunement: Learned Secure Attachment in the Body: “I’m yielding to it”; Chapter Five: Working with Dissociative and Disoriented Attachment Patterns (1): “The child fell off the chair”; Chapter Six: Working with Dissociative and Disoriented Attachment Patterns (2): “It’s all about trusting your gut”; Chapter Seven: Working with Numbness, Shut-down, Freeze: “Bushes Don’t Have Panic Attacks”; Chapter Eight: The Matter of Self-Regulation: “The Sun is coming out of her face”; Chapter Nine: Intimations of the Numinous: “It feels like a visitation from the lady in red in here” ; Conclusion: “Let your hands touch something that makes your eyes smile”; Bibliography; Index