ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the primal function of the skin of the baby and of its primal objects in relation to the most primitive binding together of parts of personality not as yet differentiated from parts of the body. It can be most readily studied in psychoanalysis in relation to problems of dependence and separation in the transference. Material will show how the containing object is experienced concretely as a skin. Disturbance in primal skin function can lead to a development of a ‘second-skin’ formation through which dependence on the object is replaced by a pseudo-independence, by the inappropriate use of certain mental functions, or perhaps innate talents, for the purpose of creating a substitute for this ‘skin-container’ function. The ‘second-skin’ phenomenon, which replaces first-skin integration, manifests itself as either a partial or total type of muscular shell or a corresponding verbal muscularity.
