In this paper, I introduce and develop my concept of Body Words and show how they emerge in clinical process in inverse proportion to the Repetition Compulsion. So it is that I see the clinician’s task in every psychoanalytic treatment as involving a particular focus on the reclamation and growth of the availability of Body Words in both participants, which I illustrate in my work with Doreen. This treatment also demonstrates that the forward movement in therapy can be inhibited, as Russell counsels, by the therapist’s resistance to what the patient is feeling.

Furthermore, I outline how my writing—whether daily session notes, associative diary entries, or more formally constructed journal articles—serves a self-supervisory function while also providing a sturdy container for evanescent process moments of Body Words. Once written, Body Words take their place as narrative, reflection, and memory, preserving experience for future reverie or conceptualization.