PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE BODY
This session follows on directly from our highly succesful winter session in Copenhagen in which the issues of bodily trauma and representation were prominent.
Psychoanalysis has always been interested in the relationship between the mind and the body. Freud's development of psychoanalytic theory and treatment originated from his consideration of the great range of embodied signs constituting the hysterical neuroses. Symptoms and signs, Freud noted in 1895, 'join in the conversation' by taking bodily form.
Lacan always talked about the intersubjective relationship between the analyst and the analysand, through speech. However, in his later work, particular Seminar XX and XXIII, he turns his attention to the body and its effects in the Symbolic.
The topic of embodiment in psychoanalysis from both theoretical and clinical points of view, clinical phenomena such as self-mutilation, fantasy about the body and its representations and meanings, enactment, sexuality, and psychotic fragmentation can be addressed in an attempt to extend our understanding of the psychoanalytic traditions that have evolved in relation to Freud's discoveries.
Joyce McDougall, author of 'Theatres of the Body' and an expert on psychosomatic conditions speaks of the emotional and physical toll it takes to be an analyst. The analyst is a 'prisoner of her chair', she observed. She described ways in which the therapist's body becomes integrated into the analytic work - for instance the traumatic impact, yet opportunity, if the analyst becomes pregnant.
Chasseguet Smirgel’s discussion of the 20th Century phenomenon where the destruction of one’s body to destroy others, both seen on a political level with suicidal bombers as well as an individual psychopathological level in cases of eating disorders, is a particular potent one in our times.
What is the body in psychoanalysis? What is affect? What do people mean when they talk about bodily experiences in film reception? What is the role of the unconscious in it? What is affect in art?
The symposium as always welcomes practitioners and theorists from all disciplines.