The present study was designed to explore how practicing cognitive behavioural and psychodynamic clinicians conceptualise, understand and work with the phenomenon of somatisation. Grounded theory as a qualitative method was chosen to analyse material from direct interviews with clinicians. Whilst the study provides an overview of theorising on the phenomenon, the main thrust of the work is to discover the clinicians' perspectives, as they emerged from the analysis of interviews. The discourse of participants' in this study is reflected in their lived experience with patients presenting with somatisation. It is within this matrix of engaged inter-subjective experience and 'mentalization' that conceptualisations of the phenomenon of somatisation become meaningful and transparent. The author draws on the idea of the 'double hermeneutic' to situate 'embodied experience' both in the therapeutic dyad and in interviews as opportunities for reflection and mentalization. The conclusion draws together aspects of pre-reflective experience and metareflective knowledge developed in the context of researcher and participant inter-subjective interaction. Ideas of 'embodied bracketing' and 'disembodied bracketing' are landmarks for a critique of grounded theory.