Mylona, Éléana
Psychosis and Somatization: Crossroads and Dead-ends
- 2013.
39
The metaphor of crossroads and dead-ends is used to introduce the relationships between psychosis and somatization in the double trajectory from the mind to the body and vice versa. The somatizing and psychotic processes are examined at the crossroads of an « in between » through the prism of the differentiation ego-object based on a precarious narcissistic economy. The clinical case of Françoise leads to the proposal that these two processes meet at the crossroads of primary anality where the early anal object is to be maintained through expulsion so as to avoid separating from it. Following this hypothesis, when subjects are threatened by dementalization, the process would closely resemble a regression to a state of primary anality on the condition that the anal fixation can keep the subject in this type of functioning.