| Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools. |
Skin and the Self: Cultural Theory and Anglo-American PsychoanalysisConcordia University, mlafranc{at}alcor.concordia.ca In recent years, a number of cultural theorists have made important contributions to the study of the body’s surface. Despite their importance, however, none of these contributions provides us with a systematic framework for understanding why the body’s surface — its skin — matters to the extent that it does. In this article, I seek to provide such a framework and, in doing so, to shed light on why the skin and the self seem to share a special and sometimes strained relationship. To this end, I will present a critical introduction to the work of two contemporary Anglo-American psychoanalysts: Esther Bick and Thomas Ogden. Throughout this introduction, I will show how both Bick and Ogden — despite the fact that they are almost completely unknown outside clinical circles — offer up a host of conceptual tools that could prove useful to cultural theorists interested in making sense of the relationship between the skin and the self.
Key Words: body surface • embodiment • psyche • soma • subjectivity
Body & Society, Vol. 15, No. 3,
3-24 (2009) This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
 |
|
Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
