Revista Brasileira de Psicanálise
Print version ISSN 0486-641XOn-line version ISSN 2175-3601
Abstract
FERRAZ, Flávio Carvalho. The tortuous path of the body in psychoanalysis. Rev. bras. psicanál [online]. 2007, vol.41, n.4, pp.66-76. ISSN 0486-641X.
The paper is about the status of the body in psychoanalysis, starting with the concept of actual neurosis and trying to assess the reasons as to why Freud ignored it. Next, based on the ideas of the post-Freudian authors connected to the French school of psychosomatics, connections are proposed between actual neurosis and the Freudian concepts of trauma and death instinct. Lastly, the clinical progress of this undertaking is assessed. The idea put forward is that in psychoanalysis the body means essentially a "remainder", and that this "remainder" is at the same time the remainder of the theory - which was abandoned, at a specific moment, as a psychoanalytic object - as well as the "remainder" of the psychic subject in his ontogenesis, i.e., his inherited genetic patrimony, which does not quite achieve the constitution of a psychic subject based on language (and therefore characterized by symbolization) and which functions in accordance with the phylogenetic schemes that have not yet been categorized. This denotes a resumption of the distinction between somatic body and erogenous body characterized by the action of support (Anlehnung), or of libidinal subversion, as coined by C. Dejours.
Keywords : Body; Actual neurosis; Psychosomatics.