The Unconscious Body Image

The Unconscious Body Image espouses a completely original view of the links between physical and psychic development, providing fresh insight into our understanding of psychosomatic symptoms and child development. Françoise Dolto describes how unconsciously held mental images of the body and its functioning impact upon the subject's feelings and ideas of themself, and conversely how emotions and ideas impact upon the body's functioning by way of these unconscious images. The Unconscious Body Image also presents Dolto's view of the development of mind in relation to unconscious body images generated at each stage of development (oral, anal, genital, latency and puberty), and ideas about psychic castration at each developmental stage and children's socialisation, filling a significant gap in psychoanalytic understanding of the mental integration of social law. This book will be a key text for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, particularly those working with children, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and psychodynamic practitioners in the social sciences, childcare and education.

Françoise Dolto (1908-1988), was an acclaimed French psychoanalyst and paediatrician. In her early career, she was mentored by Sophie Morgenstern, and she later became close friend of Jacques Lacan. She had a regular radio programme on the French national broadcast station France Inter and made many appearances on television and in print. Sharmini Bailly is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist based in the UK. Her previous books include The Lacan Tradition (Routledge, 2018).

Introduction 1. The unconscious body image 2. The body images and their destiny: the castrations 3. Pathology of body images and analytic practice