When the Body Speaks

Book excerpt: This book is based on the work done by a group of British and Italian psychoanalysts who have been meeting twice yearly since 2003 to study clinically the relationship between the mind and the body of their patients. The analytical dyad became the focus of a dialectical movement between body and mind and between subject and object. Containing contributions from a range of distinguished British and Italian analysts, this book covers such key topics as somatic symptoms, the embodied unconscious, bodily expressions of affect, sexuality, violence, self-harm, suicide attempts, hypochondria, hysteria, anorexia and bulimia, and splits and fragmentation associated with the body. The theoretical understanding is inspired by various psychoanalytic theoreticians, including Freud, M. Klein, Winnicott and Bion and their theories on sexuality, infantile sexuality, libido, aggressiveness, death instinct, Oedipus complex and mother–child relationship. Offering new advances in theoretical thinking and practical applications for clinical work, this book will be essential for all psychoanalysts and mental health clinicians interested in understanding serious mental disturbance that is represented in the body.