ABSTRACT
In the last chapter, I outlined the work of Freud and his emphasis upon the correlations between psychical and physical processes. The body is presented by Freud as a container for repressed psychical conflicts and therefore as a site for the non-verbal communication of these. Freud also focuses upon the body in his account of the development of the ego. As I hope I have shown, Freud’s notions of the body are relevant because he places importance on symptoms as relating to the lived experience of the individual rather than to an organic cause. In his understanding of ‘neurotic’ conditions including hysteria (now commonly referred to as conversion), depression, anxiety and so on, the distressing experience is swallowed down or taken inside and seemingly hidden, only to be revealed in a symptom. This symptom – often expressed bodily, as we have seen – is created by the person as a way to help them, to put it simply, bear being alive.
