ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the topic of the symbolic re-appropriation of the body during adolescence and in pathological situations. The sensory storm that is characteristic of the emergence of the sexed body confronts the adolescent. The skin in particular takes on special significance due to its functions of containment, border, boundary, and para-excitation.
With the help of two clinical cases, the meaning and dynamics of self-harm and cutting are examined. The author distinguishes two categories of marks on the skin: the first, more common, where the skin, albeit wounded, incised or pricked, functions as a screen for the adolescent's projections and such gestures coagulate and express, albeit in extreme ways, a screen towards symbolisation. In this case, the skin is a “surface of inscription” (Anzieu) for messages and communications that remain as productions somewhere between the acted and the symbolised. In a second case, these manifestations are so massive and destructive that they present self and hetero-destructive dynamics, whereby the body is definitively split off and treated as an external and extraneous object. The latter cases are the most dangerous and must attract the analyst's attention. In these second manifestations, hatred for the split body is evident and at times, these self-inflicted cuts are prodromes of far more severe attacks to one's own or the other's body.
