Mysteries, abysses and impasses in body-mind dissociation

The author considers certain complex, sometimes mysterious clinical problems which involve the body-mind link in the analysis of difficult patients. The body-mind dissociation is the first source of impasses at these levels. Despite the recurring presence of this subject in the development of psychoanalysis, body-mind dissociation has never been considered as central as other forms of dissociation with a more specifically traumatic origin. Two clinical cases are explored in which the tendency to falsity and theft complicated the already difficult scenario of dissociation. Analytic working-through showed a direct involvement of the body through various somatic manifestations and symptoms. The article shows how activating a network of body-mind contact can precede the elaboration of relational dynamics in lowering the internal sensory pressure and constructing systems of representation which perform a function of containment in relation to the disorganizing impulse of the primitive emotions.