ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the psychic roots of hair, that is, its emotional significance in people unconscious. Hair reveals not only biological and social information, but it also offers a privileged entry point into the internal world of object relations. Psychoanalytic formulations about the symbolic significance of hair have typically singled out how hair as a phallic symbol allows one to acceptably displace the exhibitionism and castration anxiety from the penis to the hair. Andresen, using the tale of Rapunzel as a starting point, identified three symbolic meanings of hair, namely castration, loss of the mother and reparation. The chapter analyses the way the use made of hair in the context of the analytic dyad can convey important information about internalized object relationships and therefore deserves the attention as analysts, and illustrates through the case of Ms E. Human dignity may be especially hard to protect when people are vulnerable in some way.
