[The frightening body]

Following a quotation of Marcel Proust about his own body experience, the paper begins with some of the reasons for the--more frequency unconscious than conscious--fears of ones own body and the reasons for its alienation. As a result of unfavourable conditions during development, in particular during the early developmental stages, undifferentiated and more physically dependent emotions are experienced as threatening, since they endanger personal integration. An additional factor is the identification of certain regions of the body with malignant object representations. There follow examples of the application of physical metaphorics in politics and mythology. The present-day role of body-orientated psychotherapy forms and their unconcluded problems are discussed at the end of the paper.