Collective Review: Body Experiences, Therapeutical practice, and Cultural Context

Abstract

In the psychopathologic literature recently, "early" mental disorders have received a great deal of attention. These patients have no consciousness of their inner conflicts, but rather, tend to "enact" them physically. Cultural practices like "fitness", diets, tattoo, piercing or plastic surgery can be interpreted in the same way. In between psychological and cultural perspectives, the body currently appears as a "process"—queer-identity politics, plastic surgery or artistic forms as dance (for an example) can be interpreted as "concrete practices" of an "embodiment" by which subjects try to "become what they are". Even psychotherapy seems to fit in this picture: the client's unconscious "enactments" and symptoms have to be transformed dialogically into a different narrative of "what one is" through bodily habit. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0204392