ABSTRACT
As has been seen in the work of Freud, allusions to the skin within psychoanalytic theory are manifold, and there are also several authors who have written about this subject within post-Freudian psychoanalysis. In her paper "The experience of the skin in early object relations", Bick proposed the term second skin, and related it to the functions of boundary, support, integration and formation of the internal and external spaces. In his book about the first year of life of the child (1965), Spitz related infantile eczema due to atopic dermatitis with "maternal hostility masked as anxiety". According to Schur, part of the fascination produced by the psychoanalytic study of dermatitis is that one can "see" certain responses; the simultaneous observation of psychic and somatic phenomena constitutes a unique experimental setting. According to Canteros, the hypersensitive reaction of the immune system is an exaggerated defence reaction of an identity which has not managed to reach an adequate individuation (1981).
