ABSTRACT
This chapter is a theoretical conceptualization of the body image, based on psychoanalytic psychotherapy with psychotic patients going through acute crises as well as some psychosomatic disturbances. When Freud speaks of the body, he refers to the projection of the ego onto the body’s surface and describes the organization of the libido in the body. He also deals with the development of the erogenous zones, the way in which they are represented, and their importance in the formation of the body ego. Every model is a pattern of symbols, rules, and proposals that are regarded, partly or wholly, as consistent with the set of existing postulates. Thus, every model postulates its correspondence with reality, the possibility of establishing its usefulness in the structure of reality. It should be noted that the construction of a model is an inner logical creation and, as such, sometimes a function of the cultural model.
