The Skin-Ego A New Translation by Naomi Segal

In this classic work, the author presents and develops his theory of the importance of 'the Skin-ego'. Just as the skin is wrapped around the body, so the author sees the 'Skin-ego' as a psychical wrapping containing, defining and consolidating the subject. From this perspective, the structure and functions of the skin can provide psychoanalysts and general readers with a fertile and practical metaphor. The author'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 setting. This new translation of Le Moi-peau is based on the second and last (1995) edition.

Series Editor’s Foreword , Translator’s Foreword , Introduction , Discovery , Epistemological preliminaries , Four sets of data , The notion of a Skin-ego , The Greek Myth of Marsyas , The psychogenesis of the Skin-ego , Structure, Functions, Overcoming , Two precursors of the theory of the Skin-ego: Freud and Federn , The functions of the Skin-ego , Disturbances of basic sensori-motor distinctions , Impairments of the structure of the Skin-ego in narcissistic personalities and borderline cases , The double taboo on touching, the condition for overcoming the Skin-ego , Principal Configurations , The wrapping of sound , The thermal wrapping , The olfactory wrapping , Confusion of qualities of taste , The second muscular skin , The wrapping of suffering , The film of dreams , Summaries and further observations , Chapter Eighteen from 1985 edition , Table of Case Studies

Didier Anzieu