Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-01T02:19:37.918Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The Body – Another

Phenomenological and Psychoanalytic Perspectives

from Part I - Body and Time: General Aspects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2020

By
Dorothée Legrand
Edited by
Christian Tewes  and
Giovanni Stanghellini
Christian Tewes
Affiliation:
Heidelberg University Hospital
Giovanni Stanghellini
Affiliation:
Chieti University
Get access

Summary

In this contribution, I consider what we call “body” and its role in clinical practices. My chapter draws upon the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jacques Lacan. This allows me to consider not only the body as a materiality structured by its finitude, not only the body as a locus of our lived experiences, not only the body as anchoring our actions, but also the body as it incarnates otherness. Otherness is here understood as twofold: On the one hand, the body as a living organism is a generality and its functioning hosts a germ of depersonalization; on the other hand, and at the same time, the body is that which keeps any other subject away from me, separated from me, irreducible to me. It thus appears that the body is both at once a concretion of alterity and of singularity. On the basis of such a conceptualization of the body, I consider the possibility of designing a clinical practice informed by both Merleau-Ponty and Lacan.

Keywords

Body-for-OthersBody-ObjectLived BodyLiving BodyPsychopathologySheer Flesh
Type
Chapter
Information
Time and Body
Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches
 , pp. 43 - 54
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agamben, G. (2007). The coming community (Hardt, M., Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Botvinick, M., & Cohen, J. (1998). Rubber hands ‘feel’ touch that eyes see. Nature, 391(6669), 756. doi:10.1038/35784CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Derrida, J. (2000). Of hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle invites Jacques Derrida to respond (Bowlby, R., Trans.). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, J. (2001). In Brault, P.-A. & Naas, M., (Eds.), The work of mourning Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Freud, S. (1964). Civilization and its discontents. In Strachey, J. (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. XXI, 1927–1931, pp. 59–145). London, UK: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis. (Original work published 1930).Google Scholar
Lacan, J. (1974–1975). Séminaire XXII: R.S.I. Unpublished.Google Scholar
Lacan, J. (1981). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. The Seminar, Book XI, 1964 (Sheridan, A., Trans.). New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Lacan, J. (1998). Encore. On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge, The Seminar, Book XX, 1972-1973 (Fink, B., Trans.). New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Lacan, J. (2002a). “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis (1953)”, in Ecrits, (Fink, B., Trans.), (pp. 197–268). New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Lacan, J. (2002b). “The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power (1958)”, in Ecrits, (Fink, B., Trans.), (pp. 489–542). New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity (Lingis, A., Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.Google Scholar
Levinas, E. (1991). Otherwise than being or beyond the essence (Lingis, A., Trans.). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, P. (1968). The visible and the invisible. Followed by working notes (Lingis, A., Trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, P. (1973). The prose of the world (O'Neill, J., Trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1988). Themes from the lectures at the Collège de France, 1952–1960 (J. O'Neill, Trans.). In Wild, J. & Edi, J. (Eds.), In praise of philosophy and other essays (pp. 69–199). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2007). Man and adversity. In Toadvine, T. & Lawlor, L. (Eds.), The Merleau-Ponty reader (pp. 189–240). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2010). Institution and passivity: Course notes from the Collège de France (1954–1955) (Lawlord, L. & Massey, H., Trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of perception (Landes, D. A., Trans.). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nancy, J.-L. (2000). Being singular plural (Richardson, R. & O'Byrne, A., Trans.). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Nancy, J.-L. (2008). Corpus (Rand, R., Trans.). New York, NY: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Rochat, P. (2004). The infant's world. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×