ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the phenomenon of the realization of a skin-related idiom that appears in fairy tales. The centrality of skin-related experiences in human development has been broadly acknowledged in psychoanalytic thought. Anzieu suggests that the ego encloses the psychic apparatus, much as the skin encloses the body. Anzieu relates to the idiom "to enter one's skin" to express issues of identification. Anzieu emphasizes the role of the skin as mediating, differentiating, and unifying the various senses. He quotes the psychoanalyst Barrie Biven, who viewed the skin as providing a phantasmatic nucleus for patients suffering from childhood injury and trauma. The term "shared skin" plays a central role in group therapy. Anzieu relates to the fantasy of shared skin between a baby and its mother. In Charles Perrault's verse tale, Donkey Skin, a maiden escapes her father's incestuous wishes by wearing the skin of a donkey.
