ABSTRACT
In Freudian theory, the body is not given in the beginning; one is not born with a body, but it is built by way of representation. As explained by Freud in Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), a new psychical action is necessary for the constitution of the body; the introduction of the soma to language. As soon as language intervenes in the body and we are able to represent it, we live the experience of the body in terms of having a body, not only being one. To understand how we go from being a body to having one, we must first understand the Freudian notion of narcissism. Freud designated the stage in which a body is primarily constituted as narcissism. In On Narcissism (1914) he said that at the beginning of a human life there is no unity of the dispersed libido, it has to be developed. As the autoerotic drives are primordial, the child’s autoerotism needs a new psychical action to take place for narcissism to be constituted; this action allows the ego and the body to unify the disperse libidinal forces.
