Spotlight

Tonight I saw the new movie “Spotlight”, about the sexual abuse by priests in Boston and around the world, the attempt to cover up by the Catholic Church, and the courageous expose by the Boston Globe.

It brought back memories of my own year working as a psychologist for the Catholic Church in a psychotherapeutic residential treatment center 1986, at the height of the sexual abuse scandal, and in the catchment area of Cardinal Low.

One of the aspects that mostly impressed me was how disconnected many of the residents were from their own bodies. I ran a weekly movement psychotherapy group in which one priest, who came from four generations of abuse, discovered that he had thought of his body before as only “something to be ashamed of.” In the group he was learning to access his bodily and emotional signals and be more in tune with his own body.

In massage therapy sessions, residents reportedly cried from years of deprivation of human contact and touch. I wondered what difference it might make if they had been given a healthy introduction to their own bodies and taught to respect them and others’. I wondered what difference it might make if all children were given a healthy introduction to their own bodies?

Here is a link from an article (PDF) I wrote after that experience that showed clinical importance of re-connecting mind and body.