A View of the History of Psychodynamic Therapy Through the Body

To understand psychodynamic therapy, one must look to Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory. Freud was among the first to explore the psychological origins of mental suffering and is regarded as a founder of what we now call the “talking cure.”

Sometimes the unconscious expresses itself through the body, in places where words and conscious thought cannot reach; the doorway opened by Freud was the first inquiry into this hidden language. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was a scientist of neurological training, born in Austria. He believed that physical symptoms were not always caused by organic factors. While working with women who presented somatic symptoms (such as fainting, blindness, vomiting) without identifiable biological pathology, he discovered that these symptoms could in fact be the outward expression of traumatic traces from childhood experiences. This discovery led to a new therapeutic approach. Psychoanalytic therapy, as a “talking cure,” was born. Freud argued that human behavior is shaped by childhood experiences and developed numerous theories to explain the self. He identified defense mechanisms that people use to cope with everyday life, described stages of human development, offered interpretations of dreams and their meanings, and much more.

Working with cases of hysteria, Freud demonstrated that psychoanalysis and the talking cure emerged through the recognition that what was repressed in the past returns in the form of bodily symptoms, and that in order to relieve these symptoms one must first understand them. To understand a symptom, he proposed reconstructing the person’s personal narrative through different psychoanalytic concepts. Psychoanalysis began in the consulting room with the patient lying on the couch, freely giving associations—but where, in this setting, does the body remain? This question can be understood in many ways. If repression manifests not only in the mind but also in traces inscribed in the body (as in hysteria), then attempting to decipher the body’s vocabulary is equally essential. A repressed feeling may reveal itself in a perpetually tense muscle or in a part of the body unable to move. These bodily clues act as doorways to the repressed material.

On this long journey, Freud defined the work of understanding personality as an “excavation,” uncovering the defense mechanisms, inhibitions, and sense of self that arose from early childhood experiences. This metaphor of excavation is equally inspiring for work with the body. Through movement, the layers of bodily experience can be opened, making visible the traces carried from past to present. In The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Freud emphasized the importance and meaning of dreams as a therapeutic tool—an idea revolutionary for its time.

In psychoanalytic theory, dreams represent wish-fulfillment, unconscious desires, and conflicts. Dreams contain both manifest (apparent) and latent (hidden) meanings. The manifest content comprises what the dreamer recalls, while the latent content represents the repressed, symbolic meaning embedded within the dream. In dream analysis, the patient shares the dream content with the therapist; once the symbols are disentangled from the manifest content, the therapist accompanies the dreamer’s associations to facilitate the discovery of the repressed material. Freud described dreams as the “royal road to the unconscious”—but what role does the body play in this pathway? While dreams provide the symbolic language of the unconscious, the body expresses it somatically.

Following Freud, many psychoanalysts and theorists enriched the theory, and psychodynamic therapeutic approaches have evolved considerably. Yet the common focus across psychodynamic therapies remains the same: the subjectivity of the individual’s associations and inner reality, and the indispensable exploration and attunement to the person’s words and subjectivity. The body often renders visible the suffering that the mind struggles to repress, breaking the silence with a roadmap of traces from the past, transforming silence into resonance. Freud’s psychodynamic theory, like Dance/Movement Therapy, seeks to read the stories hidden in this silence. Dance/Movement Therapy too is rooted in psychoanalytic theory, offering a space where dreams, symptoms, and repetitions can emerge within a journey that is both psychological and embodied.