The Body-Memory
Type de matériel :
24
Starting from the experience of certain therapies that are marked, not so much by the analysand’s silence, as by a very particular tone of speech anchored in bodily symptoms, we will address the question of the emergence of language that is coextensive with a memorial imprint characterized by the erasure of the work of the preconscious to which an “invasive” body has been substituted. With such patients, the analyst struggles with the impression of an ossification of psychological writing, of a scarred memory tissue between death and life. This article evokes, more particularly, a clinical case in relation to which the sculptures of Henry Moore produced a striking representational mediation in the listening of the analyst, and acted as countertransferential “propping.” We will draw upon the theoretical propositions of Winnicott, Pontalis, and Fairbairn regarding the organization of defenses against precocious breakdown and with respect to the emotional-corporeal states underlying these defenses. These concepts will be used in an attempt to understand a primitive psyche working as the equivalent of a “body habitus,” and in which the narcissization of the emerging ego has been fastened to the experience of a helpless body. The author will, in this context, evoke the idea of a “body-memory-scripture” which is precisely what she believes to be at issue in Moore’s work.
Réseaux sociaux