Review of Soul’s Body: Active Imagination, Authentic Movement, and Embodiment in Psychotherapy by Tina Stromsted

Trauma, dissociation, and bodily disconnection are central clinical concerns, and insight alone is insufficient for healing—there is a difference between knowing one is safe and actually feeling safe in the body. The book integrates Jungian depth psychology with somatic practices like Authentic Movement, demonstrating that somatic experience can be a precise, symbol-bearing dimension of analytic process rather than a deviation from it. A case example of "Lydia," a sexual abuse survivor, illustrates a phased approach that first emphasizes boundaries, grounding, and orienting through structured movement and sensory awareness to build bodily safety and agency before moving into more imaginal and expressive work. This approach aligns with contemporary trauma neuroscience showing that early overwhelming experiences are encoded in subcortical networks.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In Soul's body, Tina Stromsted offers a deeply informed and beautifully written integration of Jungian depth psychology, somatic practice, and creative movement.At a time when trauma, dissociation, and disconnection from the body are recognized as central clinical concerns, this book feels timely and important.It speaks to clinicians across modalities, somatic and arts psychotherapists, researchers, creatives, and anyone interested in the living relationship between psyche and soma.Throughout, Stromsted extends Jung's method of active imagination into embodied approaches such as Authentic Movement and related somatic practices.She does so with scholarly rigor and grounded clinical wisdom, while remaining faithful to the poetic, symbolic dimensions at the heart of Jungian work.For analysts concerned that bringing in the body might dilute analytic depth, she demonstrates the opposite: somatic experience becomes another precise, symbol-bearing dimension of the analytic process rather than a deviation from it.Each chapter opens with an image, moves through theory and case material, often includes experiential invitations, and closes with a poem, allowing the book to serve both as serious scholarship and as a companion for personal work.A central strength is the book's explicit attention to trauma and dissociation.Stromsted underscores that insight alone is not sufficient: there is a difference between knowing one is safe and actually feeling safe in one's body, between being able to tell one's story and no longer being organized by it at implicit, subcortical levels.This approach is consonant with contemporary trauma neuroscience, which shows that overwhelming early experiences are encoded primarily in subcortical networks, shaping vestibular, somatosensory, and interoceptive processing.Whereas trauma research maps these systems, Stromsted shows how they can be engaged experientially-through movement, sensation, and image-in ways coherent with Jungian depth psychology.The case of "Lydia," a survivor of sexual abuse, illustrates the author's carefully phased approach.Rather than beginning with eyes-closed improvisational movement, Stromsted first emphasizes boundaries, grounding, and orienting-simple, structured movement and sensory awareness to build a reliable sense of bodily safety and agency.Only as Lydia's capacity for self-regulation and present-time orientation grows does the work become more imaginal and expressive.This emphasis on stabilization and resourcing