[Latent psychosis and the language of the body]

Social anthropology has investigated the characteristics of the primitive way of thinking, also called "magic", because, like infantile thought, it considers itself able to affect reality directly and magically. But an energetic "surplus" gives man the capacity to symbolize an archaic form of which is analogical thought. Then parts of the body can become real "psychic places" which communicated through their function and through symptoms. Ontogenetically the same process takes place: beginning from the somatopsychic matrix, which is the relationship between mother and child, the latter "desomatizes" himself gradually so that what is psychic, like the verbal language, differs from what is somatic. In psychosomatic patients, who often have a pre-oedipal structure, fusion fantasies prevail, the language resomatizes and the body becomes delirious. Frequently the digestive system is the most sensitive to emotions. M., a thirty year old young man with a diagnosis of spastic colitis is not able to hold out much longer at work where he alternatively suffers from constipation and severe abdominal colics. Only at home, when his anguish connected with his fear of contamination in public toilets is reduced, can he evacuate with diarrhea discharges. He presented to the Psychiatric Department, after being admitted into hospital several times and uselessly to search for an organic cause of his symptoms. During the first interviews he looks anxious, slightly depressed and his expression through gestures and words is very poor. The counter-transference responses of the therapeutist is a sensation of emptiness, distance and difficulty in communicating. In his behaviour one can notice remarkable anal features and experiences of paranoid type slowly emerge.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)