ABSTRACT

6To address the iterated problem of having a body, it is first necessary to elaborate the concept of the body used in psychoanalytic theory and the process by which this concept has been formed. Indubitably, the emergence of the body as a representation that is different from the biological body is a difficult subject, one that has been treated obscurely in the past. Psychoanalysts hold very different points of view about this concept. A neuropsychoanalytic approach to the body would be incompatible with the concept of body employed in this text. A body in psychoanalysis is not equivalent to a biological body. Although the term has been thought of in many ways, in this book, I used Paul Preciado’s definition of the body in his conference Somatheque (2012). In this conference he stated that the body is a sensorial-cultural archive containing images, narratives, and daily cultural practices; it is a somatic-psychic unity. This idea differs from previous definitions of bodies considered as merely the physical structure and material substance of an individual.