Psychoanalysis as dance – the aesthetics and performance of elements of rupture

Prof. Andreas Hamburger

Our interdisciplinary project describes the performative signatures of psychotherapy sessions on the basis of multi-perspective investigations.

The subject of our research is interactive phenomena that, in line with the concept of moments of meeting (after Daniel Stern 2004), are characterized by the fact that they irritate, surprise and are marked by changes in expression and experience.

In the pilot phase, we initially explored the interconnections between psychoanalysis, psychology, movement analysis and dance studies in order to generate new insights and methods.

The aims of our study in the pilot phase were:

1. to understand and typify the temporal and intermodal structure of these moments;

2. to form hypotheses about the relevance of these moments in the psychotherapeutic process and to develop a hermeneutics;

3. to develop an interdisciplinary set of instruments for capturing these moments;

We work in an interdisciplinary team and combine different methods of data collection. These are:

verbal:

• SNMA (scenic-narrative microanalysis, Hamburger, 2017); hermeneutic-psychoanalytic group procedure for identifying Now Moments;
• GÉVA (Grille de l'Élaboration Verbale de l'Affect, Bouchard 1997): survey of affectualization expressed in verbal language;
• FIEM-P & T: questionnaire to capture subjectively important and other emotion-related events based on subjective memories of patients and therapists directly after the session (Krupp 2021);

non-verbal:

• NEUROGES©, (Lausberg, Sloetjes, 2009): Coding of speech accompanying movements;
• Laban Movement Analysis LMA (Laban, 1975; Kennedy, 2013): Movement analysis procedure to assess drive, form, quality, body part involvement, phrasing and spatial orientation in movement behavior;
• dance-scientific description and interpretation of movement and setting (Heller, 2022);
• 3RS (Rupture Resolution Rating System according to Safran & Muran, 2009, Eubanks et al., 2015) investigation of the therapeutic alliance on the basis of so-called moments of rupture and resolution strategies;

Subliminal:

• Determining arousal and synchronization events based on heart rate variability, electrodermal activity;
• Prosody: Examining the phonetic level for synchrony, as well as sentence melody, speaking tempo, speaking rhythm and intensity;

Study design:

Sample: N=1, three sessions of psychodynamic psychotherapy

We were able to show that there are sequences in the psychotherapy sessions we examined that independent methods agree on conceptualizing as conspicuous, evident, or as a rupture. We understand these sequences as significant and “embodied” and examine their occurrence in the psychotherapeutic process, as well as their multimodal structure.

We are currently in a second research phase, following the pilot project. We are examining the multimodal structure of the relevant moments of rupture and encounter in the course of therapy. To do this, we compare the beginning and the end of a long-term psychodynamic therapy.

Original language: German, English

Dr. Jasmin Spiegel (Martin Buber Society of Fellows, Hebrew University Jerusalem)
Dr. Veronika Heller (IPU Berlin) 
Karolin Blattmann (IPU Berlin) 
Chawwah Grünberg (Universität Witten-Herdecke) 
Jurian Krupp (IPU Berlin) 
David Schneeweiß (IPU Berlin) 
Onur Tulum (Istanbul Bilgi University) 
Dr. Lena Maria Splinter (LMU München)

Project start: 09/2020
Project end: 12/2025