The Skin-Ego

In this classic work, Didier Anzieu presents a synthesis of his research and proposes a theory on the functions of 'the skin-ego'. Just as the skin is envelope to the body, Anzieu sees 'the skin-ego' as a psychic envelope containing, defining and protecting the psyche. From this perspective, the str [...]
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In this classic work, Didier Anzieu presents a synthesis of his research and proposes a theory on the functions of 'the skin-ego'. Just as the skin is envelope to the body, Anzieu sees 'the skin-ego' as a psychic envelope containing, defining and protecting the psyche. From this perspective, the structures and the function of the skin can provide psychoanalysts and psychotherapists with fertile analogies. Anzieu's concept of the skin-ego is the answer to questions he regards as crucial to contemporary psychoanalysis: questions of topography which were left incomplete by Freud; the analysis of fantasies of the container as of the contained; issues of touch between mothers and babies; extending the concept of prohibitions within an Oedipal framework to those derived from a prohibition on touching; and questions pertaining to the representation of the body and to its psychoanalytic settingThis new translation of Le Moi-peau is based on the second and last (1995) edition. The translator, Professor Naomi Segal, is Professorial Fellow in French and German Studies at Birkbeck, University of London.