ABSTRACT
The medical image of the body is an image of the internal body, a body that is constructed, one that is other and is continuously perceived as foreign. This body only comes into existence thanks to technologies of virtualisation, and thanks to considerable computing power. The image represents the body, yet it is a body produced for medical purposes and only legible through medicine's own means. Hatoum's work is a video installation showing endoscopic images of the interior of the artist's own body. The author inquiry focuses on the fantasmatic logic it articulates as a correlate of the discourse and equipment produced by scientific technology. Psychoanalysis enables us to identify and express the psychic stakes involved in this experience. Art's way of illustrating body representation resonates in the words we hear in our everyday clinical work, in hospitals, therapy groups and other areas of the mental health system, in all the places of discussion where different perspectives meet.
