ABSTRACT
Marilia Aisenstein's background was in philosophy. She is a full member and former president of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society and a training analyst of the Hellenic Psychoanalytical Society. Her main interests lie in the mental functioning of psychosomatic and psychotic personalities. Somatic symptoms are essentially opaque and initially unintelligible, because meaning and symbolism are always supplied by deferred action; when these symptoms first break out, they appear neither as a compromise nor as a solution. The author mentions a point which again confronted us with the problem of alternation between a delusional solution and a somatic solution or somatic outcomes. In clinical psychosomatics, we are accustomed to those alternating or oscillating movements between a solution on the level of character or delusion and upsurges of symptoms which confront the psychoanalyst with the often distressing and sometimes fruitless need to rethink what has been said.
