The poetics of the symptom

Abstract

In contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice, the patient’s and the analyst’s body are growing in importance. Over time psychoanalysis has become enriched by neurosciences, sociology, neonatal studies, philosophy, literature, and art. It is especially focused on what has not been represented and integrated within the mind, and on how to recover, represent, transform, and integrate these types of experiences, with the corporeal experience now acquiring more prominence.

I will assemble those so-called “poetic” aspects in the formation and manifestation of the symptom, which come from embodied and non-symbolized experiences. I will start from the observation that poetry offers an embodied meaning, learned through the body before being understood in the mind.

Similarly, the suffering world of our patients can resonate within the therapist like a poem or a piece of music. Through careful attention to the resonances in the body and in reverie, therapists can deduce the personifications inhabiting that internal world. It is as if the poetic experience is situated “on the border” between the sensorial dimension and the verbal dimension.

After a brief review of the psychoanalytic literature on corporeal experience in psychoanalysis, a clinical vignette will clarify these statements.

Key words:

• poetics
• body
• emotional-sensorial states
• traumatic experiences
• the rejected self
• psychodynamic of revenge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Maria Loiacono

Anna Maria Loiacono is a relational/interpersonal psychotherapist and psychoanalyst who lives and works in Florence, Italy. She is President of the Training Department of the Sullivan Institute of Analytic Psychotherapy of Florence. Faculty, Training and Supervising Analyst at the same Institute of Analytic Psychotherapy of Florence, since 1991. She is also: Vice President OPIFER (Confederation of Italian Relational Psychoanalyst Societies), Executive and Delegate Member of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies. Editorial Reader of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis. She has published clinical and theoretical articles, some of them in English, and the Italian version of “The Unformulated Experience” by D. B. Stern. Her book, La teoria interpersonale di H. S. Sullivan e la Clinica della Dissociazione [The Interpersonal Theory of H. S. Sullivan and the Clinical Treatment of Dissociation]. Ed. Termanini, Genova, was published in 2016. She was the Chair of the XX IFPS Forum, held in Florence on October 17-20, 2018, dealing with “New faces of Fear: Ongoing Transformations in our Society and in Clinical Practice”. www.annamarialoiacono.it.