ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the development of the body ego and the accompanying development of the apparatus of defence as the foundation of what is referred to as mentalization in currently prevailing psychoanalytical theories of development. Psychoanalytic treatment cannot be seen as separate from the flunking on ego development and ego structures. Psychoanalyses offer us the opportunity to observe body phenomena which take place pre-consciously and which unconsciously serve drive gratification. These can become a source of resistance in the psychoanalytic process. Robert Fliess describes the “pleasure-physiologic body-ego” as an element of the body-ego that has been sexualized. Freud mentioned that parts of the ego and super-ego remain unconscious. Correspondingly Fliess describes the pleasure-physiologic body-ego as a part of the ego which nevertheless obeys the laws of primary process in its function. In the psychoanalytic community there has for years been a controversy over the development of female sexual functions.
