The Skin-Ego

In this classic work, Didier Anzieu presents and develops his theory of the importance of 'the Skin-ego'. Just as the skin is wrapped around the body, so Anzieu 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.Anzieu'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. The translator, Professor Naomi Segal, is Professorial Fellow in French and German Studies at Birkbeck, University of London.

In this classic work, Didier Anzieu presents and develops his theory of the importance of 'the Skin-ego'. Just as the skin is wrapped around the body, so Anzieu 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.Anzieu'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. The translator, Professor Naomi Segal, is Professorial Fellow in French and German Studies at Birkbeck, University of London.