The body between metapsychology and mentalization. Lines of research in psychoanalysis, after Freud
Abstract
The authors reconstruct the question of the body in Freudian writings, indicating its multiple theoretical and clinical aspects, and highlighting its conceptual complexity through the various phases of evolution of psychoanalytic discovery, from the origins, with hysteria, to the silent manifestations of the dead drive: extreme vertices of the Freudian research path which, on the body, has indicated articulated elements of reflection and without a univocal and concluded systematization. In the multiplicity of theoretical guidelines issued from Freudian cues, the conceptual prevalence of the “economic” perspective, with the concepts of representation, affect and narcissism, characterizes the contemporary French contribution to the question. The authors argue the positions of some exponents, in particular Pierre Marty, André Green, Jean Laplanche and Christophe Dejours. It should be noted that this article can be defined as an essentially historical and theoretical review of one of the possible branches of literature in the field of psychoanalytic psychosomatics, which follows the thread of the economic coordinate starting from Freudian metapsychology. In order to insert the discourse in the field of the current psychoanalytic debate, the authors refer, in conclusion, to further reading vertices of the psychosome.
