The body as a ‘vehicle’ of our being in the world. Somatic experience in Gestalt therapy 1 Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb Received 22 June 2015 Abstract: This article analyses somatic experience in the frame of reference of Gestalt epistemology, in its phenomenological, relational and aesthetic aspects. These ‘roots’ of the idea of somatic experience lead the therapist to focus his attention, on a therapeutic level, on the movement which the therapist and the client co-create with their complementary intentionalities. The article revisits concepts such as integration, self-function, holism, aggression, and support for the now-for-next in the light of somatic experience. It also provides clinical examples of the various forms of suffering of the body-in-contact, from anxiety disorders to desensitisation, and psychosomatic disturbances. Finally, it describes a few fundamental therapeutic competences which are needed for a successful Gestalt work on the body. Key words: body therapy, movement, Gestalt psychotherapy, phenomenology of the body-in- contact, anxiety disorders, desensitisation, psychosomatic disturbances, now-for-next. But in act, in contact, there is given a single whole of perception-initiating movement tinged with feeling. (Perls et al., 1994, p. 36) The experience of our corporeity is not that of an object, but rather of our way of inhabiting the world. (Galim- berti, 1989, p. 11) I have chosen the word ‘vehicle’ for the title of this work because I think it expresses well the current Gestalt point of view on the body. It is not analytical, nor Reichian/somatic: for Gestalt therapy, somatic experi- ence is, first of all, experience of movement-with (a concept that, as a matter of fact, has become well- established in neuroscience too). The word ‘vehicle’ here should be understood in its phenomenological and aesthetic value, which allows it to support movement as now-for-next. In the therapeutic setting – the one that interests us the most – somatic experience expresses the movement of integration/contact through which the client asks the therapist for support. In this article, I will describe somatic experience, while remaining coherent with Gestalt hermeneutics, so as to highlight the key points on which to develop this fundamental aspect of our approach – which is, as such, often taken for granted. Starting from anthropol- ogy and encompassing the theoretical and cultural background of the founders, I will try to answer these questions: ‘which is the most natural way for a Gestalt therapist to assess her own somatic experience as well as her client’s?’ and ‘how can the involvement in somatic experience make Gestalt therapeutic intervention effec- tive?’ The anthropological perspective of somatic experience in Gestalt therapy The way in which each psychotherapeutic approach considers somatic experience exemplifies its anthropo- logical and therefore teleological stance (see Fig. 1): what concept of the person and which concepts of health serve as backgrounds for that approach? So we may find approaches based on an idea of culture which is separate from nature, and others based on an idea of integration between culture and nature, between indi- vidual and society. In the former case (separation between culture and nature and between individual and society) the body becomes a place of conflict between instinct and civilisation (see Freud, 1929), while in the latter the body becomes the place where the integration between individual impulses and social life happens. In the former case, the cure consists in rationalising somatic experiences and putting them under the con- trol of reason. In the latter case, it consists in reawaken- ing and integrating somatic feelings. Depending on its concept of somatic experience (both the client’s and the British Gestalt Journal 2015, Vol. 24, No. 2, 21–31 # Copyright 2015 by Gestalt Publications Ltd.