Elsevier

The Arts in Psychotherapy

Volume 40, Issue 1, February 2013, Pages 143-150
The Arts in Psychotherapy

Kinaesthetic intersubjectivity: A dance informed contribution to self-other relatedness and shared experience in non-verbal psychotherapy with an example from autism

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2012.12.004Get rights and content

Abstract

Early interpersonal experiences have been the focus of philosophy and developmental psychology for decades. Concepts of self and self-other relatedness seem to have an onset in early interaction patterns during dyadic relating. Phenomenologists consider the embodied, that is the intercorporeal dialogue, as the basis for self-other relating. Developmental psychologists have shown that the responsiveness a child is met with during early phases of life is a very subtle process. Kinaesthetic intersubjectivity is introduced as a perspective on dyadic relating. Embodied attitude during dance duets is taken as an example of active nonverbal attunement between interaction partners. Shared movement situations will serve as an example of how a sense of intersubjectivity and self-other differentiation can be perceived through movement structures. Shared movement intervention could offer a new perspective for psychotherapeutic intervention in disorders with a disturbed self, like autism and need researching.

Highlights

► We describe a dance informed approach to psychotherapy. ► Concepts from dance and developmental psychology serve to model a theoretical background for DMP. ► We describe embodied and enactive interventions as fundamental in the in the therapeutic relationship. ► The “shared movement approach” is presented as intervention in autism. ► Positive outcome of this intervention has been reported in the clinical setting.

Introduction

Intersubjectivity is bound to our embodied presence and self-other relatedness. Concepts taken from dance as a healing art, combined with concepts from phenomenology can contribute to a body-informed perspective on intersubjectivity that reaches into the roots of interpersonal interaction in early development. This goes beyond models of cognitive strategies to capture self-other relations such as theory of mind (ToM) and simulation theory (ST).

Partnering, as seen in improvised dance duets, is taken as a model for mutual attunement and engagement in DMP. The duet partners form a non-verbally attuning dyad. As the dancers engage in the movement dialogue/encounter with each other, they experience a bodily anchored sense of self. In dancing together both dancers feel, through direct perception, the kinaesthetic qualities of their movement patterns. Regulation of the duet is achieved by each adjusting their impulses to the dynamics of the interaction as perceived through non-conceptual kinaesthetic and proprioceptive sensations. The dancers come to experience themselves as an intentional subject, capable of affecting the shared non-verbal experience. Self-other distinction derives from differentiating the movement patterns between the dance partners, by doing so personal variations of the previously shared dance and attunement patterns will occur.

Clinical experiences from dance movement psychotherapy (DMP) show strong similarities with embodied relationships and self-other relatedness as known from dance. We argue that the special case of DMP with patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can deepen our understanding of how to address the difficulties these patients have with non-verbal attunement in dyadic relations, and how to support them through embodied psychotherapeutic intervention.

Section snippets

Intersubjectivity

Phenomenologists have used the term intersubjectivity in the course of investigating the nature of a subject's experiences of being in the world with others. At the core of this concept is the engagement of a subject or self in relation to others around him. There have been different positions among phenomenologists to describe the properties of this engagement, which could be taken as a two-sided phenomenon between the individual and the other.

The individual's orientation towards the world is

Early infancy: intersubjectivity through non-verbal exchange

The infant's relating to others has been a focus of developmental psychology since the 1960s, when developmental psychologists started to describe the early dyadic exchanges in terms of behaviour. Imaging techniques, like film and video were used to capture the evolving communication of the neonatal and infant phase (for example Beebe and Lachmann, 1988, Bullowa, 1979, Kestenberg, 1975, Trevarthen, 1998). Interaction in the early dyad was considered a model of developing self-other distinction.

The early dyad: a body-informed perspective

As we have seen, many models on intersubjectivity take a first-second person perspective. However, from a developmental point of view, we have to consider that the neonate comes from prenatal state with the experience of being at one with the organism of the mother. We therefore make the assumption that the primary task in the neuro-typical development is not to develop sameness, but to develop otherness. Indeed, sameness has been the embodied experience up to birth. The neonate comes into the

Explorations into intersubjectivity: a dance informed approach

The kinaesthetic perspective of the development of early interaction patterns show strong similarities with the structure of (adult) interrelating that we find in certain dance forms such as dance improvisation, specifically contact improvisation (Paxton, 2003) can help us to understand the earliest forms of intersubjectivity that have been described above. Improvised dance duets are embodied participation in shared kinaesthetic patterns. In dance duets mutual understanding and shared creation

The social brain: modulation by experience

The brain is a developing organ (Schore, 1998). The brain organisation is shaped by experiences and vice versa, the structure of our brain organisation modulates experiences (Schore, 2003, van der Kolk, 2003). Plasticity and connectivity of neural circuits are the result of close interaction of biological maturation of matter and experiential shaping of matter (Keysers & Gazzola, 2006).

As experiencing is bound to the embodied self (Rochat, 2002), the social templates of brain/neuronal structure

Kinaesthetic intersubjectivity in dance movement psychotherapy

Dance movement psychotherapy (DMP) actively addresses the body-informed intersubjectivity we have described above. The therapeutic relationship is achieved through movement and dance (Payne, 1992). The therapist will route the therapeutic relationship into kinetic intersubjectivity by using shared movement as a specific intervention (Samaritter, 2010). In the shared movement situation the therapist uses her own bodily movement to ‘meet’ (Payne, 1992) the movement patterns of the patient. In

Kinaesthetic intersubjectivity: the special case of autism

Atypical social engagement in autism has shown to have an impact on these person-to-person relations from early developmental stage (Rogers & Williams, 2006). It has been observed that children with ASD show:

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    Diminished interpersonal exchange (like eye-contact, imitation of simple body movements, as well as symbolic imitation).

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    Diminished attention to environment (synchronising, pointing, joint attention).

Of all the dimensions in the appearance of autistic traits the lack of social orientation

DMP in autism spectrum disorders

DMP is known for a wide range of body-oriented and movement interventions (Levy, 1992Lewis, 1979, Meekums, 2002, Payne, 1992, Stanton-Jones, 1992) with diverse psycho-social and psychiatric problems. The clinical DMP intervention “shared movement approach” (SMA) has been described as a method for psychotherapeutic intervention in disorders with a disturbed sense of self, like in attachment trauma or autism (Samaritter, 2010). In this developmentally informed type of DMP the therapist actively

Conclusion

In this paper we propose a kinaesthetic perspective to intersubjectivity. A model of kinaesthetic partnering has been introduced to describe mutual attunement and understanding during early dyadic interaction. Body-informed intersubjectivity emerges from attentive, kinaesthetic orientation towards a shared “in-between”, that can be a gesture, movement quality or shared movement theme. In the co-creation of interpersonal relatedness the dancers come to experience themselves as intentional

Rosemarie Samaritter is a registered senior dance movement therapist, psychomotor therapist and supervisor. She is working in outpatient settings in Dutch National Health Service institutions. She had been closely involved in the development of the first professional dance movement therapy education programmes in Netherlands and the representation of dance movement therapy in professional association of creative therapists. She has worked in training programmes in The Netherlands, Finland and

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    Rosemarie Samaritter is a registered senior dance movement therapist, psychomotor therapist and supervisor. She is working in outpatient settings in Dutch National Health Service institutions. She had been closely involved in the development of the first professional dance movement therapy education programmes in Netherlands and the representation of dance movement therapy in professional association of creative therapists. She has worked in training programmes in The Netherlands, Finland and Germany. Currently she is a PhD candidate at the University of Hertfordshire (UK), working on interlaces of dance therapy and neuroscience in autism spectrum disorders.

    Helen Payne, PhD, is Professor of Psychotherapy, accredited with UKCP, specialising in dance movement psychotherapy (Snr. Reg. and Fellow ADMP UK) at the University of Hertfordshire and in private practice. She has worked with children and adolescents with Autism for many years. She supervises PhD candidates, teaches at post graduate level and delivers short courses to health practitioners. Her current research is into movement and its use as a metaphor for an intervention (The BodyMind Approach) for patients in primary care with medically unexplained symptoms.

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    Address: School of Psychology, School of Education, De Havilland Campus, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield Business Park, Hatfield AL10 9EU, UK.

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