ABSTRACT
A person’s lack of a symbolizing transformation of perceptions of his own body and the feelings appertaining to it seems to be characteristic of psychosomatic illnesses. People have moved away from attributing a specific unconscious meaning to each psychosomatic symptom. However, pain penetrates all the psychic systems that inhibit perception and inevitably directs attention to parts of the areas of the body and enforces a psychic realization. This chapter presents some considerations concerning the function of pain and time. The physical pains were thereby replaced by psychical pains in a decade-long process in which reality, separateness, and death were temporarily completely disavowed. Various bodily stimuli and pains were wordlessly representing the lack of contact and the failure of potential transformative opportunities that were available. But pleasure becomes intolerable and, thus, turns to pain if the primary object is lost or unpredictably fails to be constantly available.
