Embodied affectivity: on moving and being moved

Abstract

There is a growing body of research indicating that bodily sensation and behavior strongly influences one's emotional reaction toward certain situations or objects. On this background, a framework model of embodied affectivity is suggested: we regard emotions as resulting from the circular interaction between affective qualities or affordances in the environment and the subject's bodily resonance, be it in the form of sensations, postures, expressive movements or movement tendencies. Motion and emotion are thus intrinsically connected: one is moved by movement (perception; impression; affection) and moved to move (action; expression; e-motion). Through its resonance, the body functions as a medium of emotional perception: it colors or charges self-experience and the environment with affective valences while it remains itself in the background of one's own awareness. This model is then applied to emotional social understanding or interaffectivity which is regarded as an intertwinement of two cycles of embodied affectivity, thus continuously modifying each partner's affective affordances and bodily resonance. We conclude with considerations of how embodied affectivity is altered in psychopathology and can be addressed in psychotherapy of the embodied self.

Keywords: affect; body feedback; embodied intersubjectivity; embodied therapies; embodiment; emotion; interaffectivity; psychopathology.

Figure 1

Embodied affectivity. We use phenomenological terminology in the model; in psychological terminology subject could be replaced by person, and affection by affect. Expression is constitutive of e-motion (centrifugal), impression is constitutive of affection (centripetal), resulting in interoceptive and proprioceptive body feedback or bodily resonance (arrows in subject). Emotion is mediated by the expressive ability (e.g., Laban, 1980), and affection is mediated by the permeability of the person system (Lewin, 1935). Both expression and impression (Wallbott, 1990) constitute the unity of movement and perception (cf. Weizsäcker, 1940), and form an integral part of our personality.

Figure 2

Interaffectivity. The figure is an integration of Koch (2011), Froese and Fuchs (2012), and Fuchs (2013). Interaffectivity includes body feedback (i.e., the impression function within self and other) which is necessary for interbodily resonance. Components of interbodily resonance are: mirroring or complementing movements, body awareness (via proprioceptive body feedback), and kinaesthetic empathy; they are psychotherapeutically important in phenomena such as somatic countertransference (Pallaro, 2002).

Figure 3

Movement rhythms. Example of rhythm writing to capture affect expression and vitality contours (Kestenberg and Sossin, , ; Stern, 2010).