ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the use of the body including self-harm and physical ailments in order to express unrepresented affects. Two clinical illustrations highlight the analyst’s difficulty in bringing to the patient’s attention the different use they are making of their respective bodies. While the patients seem to be fully engaged in the analytic process, split off unconscious aggressive affect is silently projected into the body in such a way that the analyst may overlook this process for some time. In these particular patients, in whom there is a marked disconnection between the body and the mind, analytic breaks, including breaks between sessions, are likely to stir up separation anxiety and ensuing unconscious affects of an aggressive nature, which they manifest through the body, sometimes with serious consequences.
