The Embodied Self: movement and psychoanalysis
Katya Bloom
The work of Suprapto Suryodarmo, Indonesian movement teacher whose non-stylised movement
practice derives from his relationship with the natural world, offers valuable insights into the
integrative power of movement as a medium for psychophysical integration. When I worked with
Prapto in Indonesia where he lives, and various places in Europe where he taught, I was struck by
the similarities between his study of human experience through movement, and ideas drawn from
psychoanalytic thinking of which he knew nothing. Yet, because both points of view derive from
experience and observation, it is perhaps not so surprising that the principles arising from them are
much the same.
Suryodarmo refers to Amerta Movement as engendering ‘response-ability’ – the ability to respond
to self, other, and the atmosphere and surroundings. His work stimulates awareness of the body’s
structure and its three-dimensional form, contained by the skin. Students of Amerta are encouraged
to be in the here and now, finding the time and space which embodies not only the present, but is
also acknowledged to incorporate and reflect the movers’ personal and cultural backgrounds.
Students develop the movement vocabulary which embodies their own sensory, perceptual and
emotional experience from moment to moment. For Suryodarmo, movement provides a “bridge to
understanding” and growth. This process has much in common with the psychoanalytic method of
free association.
Prapto does not refer to his work as therapy; but he has referred to himself as a ‘gardener’. He
describes the garden as being the space in between the protected world of home and the outside
world of society. This could also be thought of as a description of the ‘transitional space’ described
by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, between the infant’s merger with mother and the separation
from her. The area in between is a space where there is potential for creativity and meaningful play
to take place.
As Suryodarmo moves with students, he supports them in dealing with whatever is arising, in their
efforts to give form to and become ‘in-formed’ by what they are doing – through embodying,
expressing or containing their feelings, wishes and needs. With Suryodarmo, this is usually a nonverbal process which he has described, when things are flowing, as a process of ‘irrigation’.
In my opinion, Amerta Movement could have a place in advancing the training of psychotherapists
as well as movement therapists, as it offers a skill which is often overlooked – how to make one’s
own three-dimensional bodily experience more conscious as a container, for receiving the
transference, projective identification and countertransference more fully. This work could support a
clearer recognition of what happens when therapists become enmeshed, overwhelmed or
unconsciously absorbed by interactions with patients.
Excerpted from The Embodied Self: movement and psychoanalysis (Karnac Books, 2006, page 37-38)
by Katya Bloom, PhD, a movement psychotherapist in private practice in London. She taught Dance
Movement Therapy at the University of Surrey Roehampton from 1985 until 2002. She is a Certified
Movement Analyst from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in New York, and is a
qualified teacher of Suprapto Suryodarmo’s Amerta Movement. She also teaches movement to
actors at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and is the author of two stage plays. She is co-author
with Rosa Shreeves of Moves: A Sourcebook of Ideas for Body Awareness and Creative Movement
(1998). She has pursued her interest in the interrelationships between psychoanalysis and movement
since coming to London from the USA in 1983, culminating in her Ph.D., “Movement as a
Psychophysical Process,” under the auspices of the University of E. London and the Tavistock Clinic, in
2005.
The Embodied Self: movement and psychoanalysis (Karnac Books, 2006)