Charpine Piscaglia, Isabelle

Sofia and Corporal Invasion - 2015.


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This article recounts the psychotherapeutic treatment of an adolescent, Sofia, suffering from a major vascular malformation. This “journey” through the different transference and countertransference movements of Sofia’s therapeutic process cannot take place without the theoretical “tos and fros” that include unconscious wishes, childhood wishes, ambivalence, the young girl’s resistance, and the particularity of this therapeutic encounter: the body’s place in the therapeutic setting. I also make a link with her mother’s illness: cancer. The interpretation model that I used during the three years of psychotherapy was that of an undifferentiated mother-child body and a common struggle for recovery. I will therefore regularly return to this idea of the “common body” and the issues relating to the setting and its arrangements, as well as the reorganization of transferential/countertransferential movements whenever there was a recurrence of Sofia’s or her mother’s symptoms.