Patients with psychosomatic disorders have been variously
conceived as lacking in symbolization, being alexithymic (without words for
emotions), and having deficits in mentalization. Lombardi’s paper is
reminiscent of our discussions in the Repetitive Painful States course about
symbolic origins, or lack thereof, and the development of (bodily) experience
into “the differentiating force of thought.” According to Lombardi, the body is
the starting point for mental activity, and upon it psychic reality is based. “[T]he
body furnishes the constitutive elements from which are derived both the
precursors of the emotions and the perceptual structure out of which the ego
develops.” Without an internal construct, internalization is meaningless.
Furthermore, “[T]he sensory level imposes itself as the sole condition for gaining access to existence.” Through bodily sensations (such as the smell of an unwashed body) Ogden’s autistic-contiguous position posits experience of the feeling that one exists, for “the body [is] the first and founding entity upon which the subject’s identity is based.” The body is used in an attempt to repair and heal the internal void. In attempts to feel real or alive one may attack the body (e.g. self mutilation). Conversely, bodily sensations may be marginalized or corporeity rejected altogether (such as in Lombardi's clinical case of the man with anorexia nervosa; or in the extreme case of psychotic depersonalization). Therapists, then, may find verbal communication obfuscated by the predominance or exclusion, respectively, of the sensory-emotional dimension.
Furthermore, “[T]he sensory level imposes itself as the sole condition for gaining access to existence.” Through bodily sensations (such as the smell of an unwashed body) Ogden’s autistic-contiguous position posits experience of the feeling that one exists, for “the body [is] the first and founding entity upon which the subject’s identity is based.” The body is used in an attempt to repair and heal the internal void. In attempts to feel real or alive one may attack the body (e.g. self mutilation). Conversely, bodily sensations may be marginalized or corporeity rejected altogether (such as in Lombardi's clinical case of the man with anorexia nervosa; or in the extreme case of psychotic depersonalization). Therapists, then, may find verbal communication obfuscated by the predominance or exclusion, respectively, of the sensory-emotional dimension.
Relying on the work of Ferrari, Lombardi writes that “the
continuous flow of sensations from the body” and “the intersection of
sensations and thoughts” allow the “potential for expressing current emotions”
such as ‘I am afraid’; I don’t feel well; I feel lost; you are beautiful; I
love you; I hate you.’ “[T]hinking is deemed to be at all times connected with feeling.”
Delusions, obsessions, phobias, may be primitive sensory expressions, a necessary resort until more favorable conditions for mentalization present themselves “such as an encounter with an analytic reverie, which afford[s] an opportunity for…language proper and hence thought…[and for] the construction of a language to enable corporeity to speak.” Just as the mother’s reverie quells tensions allowing for mental space to process (‘receive and recognize’) the infant’s bodily sensations, providing an “area of transition from the concreteness of sensation to the first forms of abstraction and representability,” psychotherapy gingerly develops language to allow for symbolic expression and for the re-integration of the false duality between mind and body. Aptly put, Lombardi notes, “The function of analysis is to lead the analysand back to a real lived dimension so as to generate fragments of authentic experience.”
Delusions, obsessions, phobias, may be primitive sensory expressions, a necessary resort until more favorable conditions for mentalization present themselves “such as an encounter with an analytic reverie, which afford[s] an opportunity for…language proper and hence thought…[and for] the construction of a language to enable corporeity to speak.” Just as the mother’s reverie quells tensions allowing for mental space to process (‘receive and recognize’) the infant’s bodily sensations, providing an “area of transition from the concreteness of sensation to the first forms of abstraction and representability,” psychotherapy gingerly develops language to allow for symbolic expression and for the re-integration of the false duality between mind and body. Aptly put, Lombardi notes, “The function of analysis is to lead the analysand back to a real lived dimension so as to generate fragments of authentic experience.”
Lombardi,
R. (2002). Primitive Mental States and the B... Ferrari's Concrete Original
Object. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 83:363-381.
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