The meanings of bodily experience and nonverbal communication were subjects of intense interest and speculation to James McLaughlin throughout his writings. In spite of his decades-long challenges to psychoanalytic orthodoxy, he was never able to move fully beyond the theoretical biases toward the body promulgated by the classical and ego psychological cultures in which he was trained and practiced. This paper explores this unfinished aspect of McLaughlin's clinical work and his foreshadowing of the growing interest and understanding in contemporary psychoanalytic models of the centrality of nonverbal communication and sensate experience in psychic organization and interpersonal relations.