Trauma and the body: a psychoanalytic reading of Almodovar's The Skin I Live In

Lemma’s analysis of Almodovar’s film highlights the centrality of loss in trauma and how a failure to mourn may lead to particular identificatory processes where action replaces words. This links with Freud’s concept of the repetition compulsion and is linked to the failure of symbolic functioning as a hallmark of the impact of trauma. Lemma also describes the relationship between the body and identity.