Psychosomatic events: self-care as technology of the self

Psychoanalysts are familiar with the way the soma can suddenly intrude into an analytic process. In the course of a psychosomatic events tend to present themselves regularly. Psychosomatic events illustrate mysterious, often unresolvable riddles of the mind–body connections. Erupting during psychoana lytic treatment, they alert analysts to self-care phenomena that could not be reached by logos alone. Sleeping in session was, for Daniel, a psychosomatic event that helped him provide restitution for a self in need of care. Psychosomatic events call attention to those neglected dimensions of concrete self-care. Technologies of the self are deployed in the service of self's survival and integration. Self-care is not at the service of understanding, but as means to stimulate and bring the self "back to life". Projective identification is a useful mechanism for caregivers who, with language, become bridges between the somatic and the abstract.