ABSTRACT
The body remembers both early and traumatic experiences. Suffering, illness and loss of body unity interfere with the building of the Ego. Like pain, intense sensations leave a scar on the Ego. The powerful associations among body sensation, body image and mental life demand a central role in the mind of the therapist. In recent years psychoanalytic thinking has witnessed a renewal of interest in the unconscious forces behind the contemporary burgeoning of identity pathology; work with disturbances in identity, autistic features, eating disorders, addiction, and gender issues has reinforced the unassailable association between a loss of the connection with the body and archaic anxieties. In the post Freudian era, the narcissistic and borderline patient supplanted the neurotic patient at the center of analytic thinking and practice. The body presents as the first vital object of reference at the time of the process of unification of the different autoerotic, partial drives into a singular unit that will become the Ego.
