ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains Marilia Aisenstein's clinical presentation illustrates both the therapeutic possibilities and the technical difficulties inherent in psychoanalytic work with psychosomatic patients. 'The Man from Burma', the pseudonym she gave to the patient she was treating in psychotherapy, suffered from a severe form of haemorrhagic rectocolitis, typical of a psychosomatic solution. The chapter describes the conceptual contradiction in Freud's theory as an indication of the articulating and mediating aspects of the concept of instinctual drives. His idea of describing drives in general led him, of course, to attribute an objective content to the concept, thus losing sight of its specific features. Freud made use of the concept of sexualisation when referring to animism and magical thinking as bearing witness to the ascendancy of the primary process; the concept of desexualisation implies 'an abandonment of sexual aims', 'a kind of sublimation'.
