Working with Mind-Body-Brain in a Dyadic Treatment Through Embodied Witnessing to Heal Trauma of Human Origin

Over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries the Freudian intrapsychic and drive-based view of development of the human mind has been replaced by work done in several interdisciplinary fields which prove that the human mind is from its very inception a social mind, which best develops in connection with other minds and bodies, in interpersonal realms. It thrives through attunement, attachment, care and synchrony with numerous other minds and personalities. Moreover, research has also shown that higher order faculties in the human subject develop when there is the constant care and sensitivity of another human based on right-brain functions for a lengthy period of time, regardless of the biological sex of the caregiver. These developments of psychoanalytic theory have a strong impact on all aspects of psychotherapy, particularly with regards to the psychotherapy with survivors of what I have called second and third levels of trauma (Mucci, 2013, 2018, 2022), where an interpersonal focus on testimony and bearing witness thorough mind-brain and body are called for, what I term "embodied witnessing" (Mucci, 2018, 2022, 2023a), which could also be applied to personality disorders of traumatic origin, and facilitate healing in trauma survivors.