Sensation

sensations

Sensation occupies a remarkably heterogeneous position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as a psychological type-function, a somatic datum, a philosophical category, and a therapeutic tool. Jung establishes the foundational typological distinction in Psychological Types, where sensation is defined as the irrational function par excellence — the perception of concrete reality in either its extraverted form (riveted to objective fact) or its introverted form (coloured by the subjective component of perception). His seminar notes sharpen this: the psychological function of sensation is the perception of reality, entirely distinct from bodily pleasure, despite common conflation of the two. Somatic therapists such as Levine, Ogden, and Fogel substantially reframe the term: for them, sensation names the felt interoceptive signal — proprioceptive, kinesthetic, visceral — that anchors trauma processing and self-regulation. Levine’s SIBAM model positions sensation as the primary channel through which the body narrates its own history. Ogden’s sensorimotor approach treats bodily sensation as a clinical object requiring vocabulary-building and mindful tracking, distinct from emotion and cognition yet intimately entangled with both. Simondon introduces a third valence: sensation as transductive rather than relational, a triadic act of orientation in which the living being locates itself between poles. The corpus thus holds in tension a typological, a somatic, and a metaphysical understanding of sensation — all three irreducible to one another.

In the library 22 passages

Sensation, which by its very nature is dependent on the object and on objective stimuli, undergoes considerable modification in the introverted attitude. It, too, has a subjective factor, for besides the sensed object there is a sensing subject who adds his subjective disposition to the objective stimulus.

Jung defines sensation as inherently object-dependent yet modified by a subjective component in the introverted attitude, establishing the dual character of the sensation function.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychological Types, 1921thesis

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Differentiated sensation is the fonction du réel, the perception of reality, and it has nothing to do with the functions of the body. People think they are developing sensation when they have sexual experiences, or when they eat and drink well, or when they take a hot bath.

Jung insists that the psychological function of sensation is the principled perception of reality, categorically distinct from bodily pleasure or sensory experience in the physiological sense.

Jung, C.G., Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984thesis

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The first usage of sensation is more transductive than relational: sensation allows us to grasp how the medium extends into the… The constant error that has distorted the relational theory of sensation consisted in thinking that relation was the grasping of two terms: in fact, the polarity of tropism implies the simultaneous grasping of three terms.

Simondon argues that sensation is fundamentally a triadic, transductive act of orientation — the living being locating itself as a centre between poles — rather than a dyadic relational event.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis

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Sensation and the Felt Sense. When working with physiology, the first thing to recognize is that the felt sense is closely related to awareness… The sensations that accompany these images are immensely valuable. For our purposes, what matters most is how the sensations feel and how they change.

Levine positions bodily sensation as the primary datum of trauma work, distinguishing it from cognitive interpretation and establishing its therapeutic primacy through the felt sense.

Levine, Peter A., Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma - The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences, 1997thesis

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Just as sensation and affect are often undifferentiated by clients, sensation can also be confused with meaning, interpretation, or cognitive distortion… Such descriptions clearly distinguish physical sensations from the belief with which they coincide.

Ogden argues that sensation must be clinically differentiated from affect, meaning, and cognition, and that somatic tracking of sensation is essential to trauma therapy.

Ogden, Pat, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006thesis

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Perhaps the most striking evidence of successful empathy is the occurrence in our bodies of sensations that the patient has described in his or hers. During the 1970s, I developed a model that allowed me to ‘track’ the processes whereby my clients processed experiences… Sensation, Image, Behavior, Af—

Levine introduces the SIBAM model in which sensation is the first and foundational channel of embodied experience, grounding empathy and trauma tracking.

Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010thesis

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In much the same way that knowing a variety of words to describe various emotions helps clients distinguish the richness and variety of their emotions, developing a vocabulary for sensation can help your clients distinguish the richness and variety of their physical feelings.

Ogden establishes that developing a linguistic vocabulary for sensation is a core clinical task, enabling clients to differentiate physical experience from emotion and thought.

Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting

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The most intimate sense we have of ourselves is through proprioception, kinesthesia and visceral sensation… Without the unimpeded perceiving of these sensations, it simply is not possible to know who you are and what you want and need in life.

Levine argues that proprioceptive, kinesthetic, and visceral sensation constitute the irreducible basis of self-knowledge, without which identity itself is compromised.

Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting

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There you see how the inferior function, introverted sensation in this case, was the door to experiencing the deeper layers of the unconscious, its superpersonal aspects. He got out of his ego and ego purposes via this contact with nature and the horse.

Von Franz demonstrates that the inferior sensation function, when engaged concretely, becomes the threshold through which an intuitive type accesses the deeper impersonal unconscious.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psychotherapy, 1993supporting

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Clients’ propensity to associate sensation with traumatic memory can quickly cause arousal to exceed the window of tolerance… you might first invite them to notice if they feel any sensation at all that is neutral or not triggering, scary, or overwhelming.

Ogden identifies the clinical challenge that traumatic association renders sensation itself a trigger, requiring careful graduated approaches for dissociative clients.

Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting

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The term inner-body sensation refers to the myriad of physical feelings that are continually created by movement of all sorts within the body… The capacity to have some awareness of sensation was referred to as the ‘sixth sense,’ first described by Charles Bell in the early 1800s.

Ogden grounds inner-body sensation in the history of interoceptive science, linking proprioception and kinesthesia to what Bell termed the sixth sense.

Ogden, Pat, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006supporting

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Extraverted sensation, as a cognitive process, seeks ‘an accumulation of actual experiences of concrete objects’ and the function can become, in the moment, so riveted on the reality ‘out there’ that it cannot recognise that other things may also be happening at that same time.

Papadopoulos clarifies extraverted sensation as a cognitively riveted function of accumulating concrete objective experience, with the limitation of missing simultaneous subjective or contextual data.

Papadopoulos, Renos K., The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006supporting

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Becoming aware of body sensations opens up a whole new avenue of discovery for us, enriching our internal experience and sense of vitality. However, it can initially trigger emotions that feel out of control, especially after trauma.

Ogden frames sensation awareness as simultaneously enriching and destabilizing, requiring therapeutic co-regulation before it becomes a resource rather than a re-traumatizing stimulus.

Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting

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You can learn to become more aware of your body sensations and develop a rich language to describe them… you can also learn to recognize sensations that herald the beginning of dysregulated arousal or emotions, rather than numbing out.

Ogden illustrates the clinical goal of sensation literacy — learning to read bodily signals as early warning indicators of dysregulation rather than dissociating from them.

Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting

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The salubrious sensations evoked by the combination of breathing and the sound’s reverberations allow the individual to contact an inner security and trust along with some sense of orientation.

Levine demonstrates how deliberately cultivated pleasant sensations via breath and sound can counteract traumatic somatic states, restoring orientation and inner security.

Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting

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Suppose sensation vested in the ‘leading-principle’ itself: then, a first alternative, it will be felt in some one part of that [some specifically sensitive phase], the other part excluding a perception which could serve no purpose.

Plotinus raises the classical philosophical problem of where and how sensation is unified in the soul, interrogating whether it can be localised in any one principle without generating regress or contradiction.

Plotinus, The Six Enneads, 270supporting

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After directly experiencing this relief as a sensation in her body (a sensation that directly contradicted her paralyzing terror) Sharon regained a sense of aliveness and the felt reality that she had, indeed, survived.

Levine shows that a new somatic sensation — directly contradicting the body-memory of terror — restores temporal orientation and existential meaning after trauma.

Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting

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These five building blocks—thoughts (cognitions), emotions, perceptions (internally generated images, tastes, smells, touch, and sounds), body movements, and body sensations—are the focal points of mindful attention.

Ogden situates body sensation as one of five distinct building blocks of present-moment experience within the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy framework for mindful clinical attention.

Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting

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When these motions penetrate to the consciousness, sensation follows in the soul; but they may die away and be lost before the consciousness is reached. Finally, sensation may or may not be attended by pleasure or pain.

Plato’s Timaeus establishes an early proto-psychological account of sensation as the soul’s registration of bodily motion, dissociable from the pleasure or pain that may accompany it.

Plato, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997aside

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The association between specific bodily sensations, dysregulated arousal, and emotions may influence traumatized clients to think that current relationship tension is responsible for their discomfort.

Ogden notes that misattribution of somatic sensation to present relational context — rather than past traumatic arousal — is a common clinical error requiring psychoeducation.

Ogden, Pat, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006aside

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The psychical forces are concerned with free volition, that is to say, impulsive movement and sensation. Impulsive movement includes change of place and movement of the body as a whole, and phonation and respiration.

John of Damascus situates sensation within the classical Aristotelian taxonomy of psychical forces, distinguishing it from vegetative and vital powers as subject to voluntary governance.

John of Damascus, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016aside

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Related terms