Pathways to Pain Relief—An Introduction1

Searched the psychoanalytic literature in 1979 while learning to treat John E. Sarno, MD's pain patients at Rusk Institute-NYU Langone Medical Center. She resonated with Winnicott and Krystal. McDougall became a cherished mentor and consultant who encouraged her to write. While an advanced psychoanalytic candidate, Lewis Aron invited her to co-edit Relational Perspectives on the Body (1998), a groundbreaking volume bringing the body back into the psychoanalytic consulting room. Elaborating her treatment of Ellen, she illustrated a relationship between dissociated affect and the development of chronic musculoskeletal back pain. Tracking the development of the analytic relationship—its possibilities and perils—her passion and perseverance are palpable as the analytic couple searches for relief from pain by integrating and regulating affect. In Bodies in Treatment: The Unspoken Dimension (2008), Anderson wrote about a thirty year period of being an analysand who was simultaneously experiencing bodywork adjunctively. Discovering in bodywork that the origin of her chronic headaches could be traced to pre-, peri-, and post-natal trauma, she now understood vividly her vulnerability to difficulties with affect regulation and sensitivity to disrupted attachments: she, too, was a pain patient. Anderson, certified in 2011 as a somatic experiencing practitioner, is studying with Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell about the impact of early trauma on somatic resilience. In 2013, Anderson co-authored Pathways to Pain Relief with Eric Sherman, PsyD. E-mail: