From Michel to Michael: from docile bodies to enlivened spirits

Abstract

It seems to be written in stone that postmodern therapies have completely dissociated themselves from the body. Particularly narrative therapy in its use of text metaphor, in its effort to transform the dominant narratives and meanings of people's life experiences into alternative narratives. Given the disembodied considerations of this clinical practice, a review of Michel Foucault's docile body and its transformation into an enlivened spirit in Michael White is proposed. Movement that looks at the constitution of subjectivity as a politically embodied identity. As a hypothesis, it is in narrative therapy where a new way of thinking about corporality and its connection with the revitalization of the “sense of myself” is inaugurated. The reflections will be accompanied by a clinical case.