Biography of a Corpus; Writing, Body and Madness

Abstract

The paper intends an approach to early mournings considered as early traumas that, overwhelming the capacities of the still developing psyche prevents a process that cannot be included in the symbolic functioning, becoming trapped in the body as “scars” waiting to have a place in the psyche. Helplessness, archaic anxiety as a consequence of the loss can be disguised as omnipotence to preserve the ego from fragmenting itself. This defense, necessary at the time of maximum indefention is a risk because if it continues it could be the cause of a pathological evolution of narcissism. Even when a psychoanalytic treatment takes place there could remain scars to be reactivated in vital moments of profound changes in which drives could be affected emerging more primitive defenses compromising the identifications that support ego sources, as it happens in adolescence. This would show a non elaborable core in all mournings that when reactivated would cause omnipotent defenses to come to light like the ones of pathological narcissism. As an example the author shows a vignette of a prepuberal patient who returns after a previous analysis.