Developing the I-body in the analytic process

The paper deals with the working through of the presence of the body in the psychoanalyt-ical process: not just that of the patient, but also of the psychoanalyst and of their interplay. The Author gives us clinical examples and highlights some of the connected topics, such as: the specificity of the analytic space, the need to refer to the Freudian conceptualization of the drives, the concept of erogenous zones and the possibility of connecting unconscious fantasy to sexual excitement, the experience of the primary hallucinatory satisfaction. The Author also underlines the necessity to resort to psychoanalytical models (in some as-pects like that of Winnicott) which consider the development of the psychic life as a conse-quence of a basic primitive relationship between two bodies. Then, following neuroscientific knowledge - like the reality of plasticity, both neuronal and phenotypic - allows us to hypoth-esize an even bigger influence of the primary environment and of the importance of the mater-nal functions on the infant’s body during development and to consider a similar situation dur-ing the analytical relationship based on transference-countertransference.

Keywords: Body, analytic process, transference/countertransference, development of the psychic life

Patrick Miller, Elaborare l’Io-corpo nel processo analitico in "PSICOANALISI" 2/2019, pp 43-53, DOI: 10.3280/PSI2019-002004