BODY PSYCHOLOGY AND INTERPRETATIVE METHOD S - WORK WITH 2ND-ORDER INTERPRETATIONS (PROCESS INTERPRETATIONS)

In our attempts to approach the central conflicts of patients with psy chosomatic disorders, we often observe states that can be described as ''zones of cognitive destruction.'' In these zones the mental process es undergo qualitative changes culminating in a ''psychic crash.'' The re is a loss of language, symbolization and psychic distance, accompan ied by a parallel loss of a sense of time, ego awareness and of the fe eling of vitality. These states show us that the patient's original ex perience, which has not yet been worked through, contains not only ele ments of conflict, but is also associated, in the pathological zone, w ith destruction of the ability to symbolize, i.e. of basic thought pro cesses. This paper describes how these states can be made the subject of therapy, which then aims to assist the patient in restoring his or her damaged thought processes. This is accomplished by using a languag e of interpretation involving interpretations of the second order, i.e . process interpretations. To provide a theoretical framework for this process, we have introduced the terms semiotic progression and semiot ic regression.