Michelet, Jacques

The Mentally Handicapped Person’s Body Language in a Psychotherapeutic Context - 2010.


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In our psychotherapeutic work, we try and understand the mentally handicapped person’s expressive behavior and, together with him or her, we enact it. Here we give examples to demonstrate that metaphoric positioning, representation, symbolization and body space, all meaningful, should be taken into account. A transitional space-time area is made available to patients to enable them to translate their body language into clear words. The means that we use (games, mirrors, drawing) are mediating objects which bring to light the problems that have been raised.