ABSTRACT
The Skin-ego rests on a wrapping that is originally mainly tactile or acoustic. In the case of Gethsemane, the wrapping was essentially olfactory; the common skin combined specifically the smells of the genital and anal orifices with those of the secretions of the skin. An olfactory wrapping creates an undifferentiated totality combining the skin with the erogenous zones. It also unites opposing instinctual characteristics: the contact with his godmother’s body was at the same time narcissistically reassuring and libidinally attractive and, on the other hand, invasive, overpowering, and irritating. Some very brief observations on patients who attacked the continuity of their own skin by squeezing their pimples or blackheads are reported by Freud and Bion; according to them, this is the manifestation of an archaic castration complex threatening the integrity of the skin in general rather than specifically that of the genital organs. Gethsemane’s olfactory wrapping, with its many holes, was different from this.
