Communicating Without Words in Psychotherapy … and Why We Can't Talk About It

Cross-disciplinary findings affirm that a continuous flow of un-worded communication occurs between humans. Therapists and patients are no exception. In fact, when un-worded communication is synchronized between them, ratings of alliance and empathy rise and drop-out from therapy lowers. Psychoanalysis has shied from taking this aspect of communication and intervention seriously enough to devote consistent training and research resources to it. Fears of the unknown, fears of emotional intimacy, and being unwittingly caught up in a centuries-long cultural push to replace the primacy of right-hemispheric processing with left-hemispheric processing are contributing factors.