The embodied therapist – meaning-making with Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

A twentieth-century philosopher and phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty placed the human body at the centre of his explorations around the self, other, and world. Using this fundamental tenet, this chapter explores how three aspects of his lived body “ corps vécu” approach prove useful for the therapist with lived experience of disability in collaborative work and navigating clinical practice. These are (1) the concept of the lived body emphasising lived experience, and autonomy over diagnostic categories; (2) what emerges through intersubjectivity and the healing dynamic; (3) the lived body as a creative and adaptive agent in how we shape and make meaning in the world around us. Complexities and tensions around these three aspects are analysed and illustrated from personal experience as a practising clinician with lived experience of disability. These include the role of the phenomenological approach alongside the default medical model, the nexus of phenomenology, disability, and technology, and how the models acceptance commitment therapy and compassionate-focused therapy have valuable creative, compassionate, and playful elements that chime with the phenomenological.