Marc Lafrance

Abstract

Over the course of the past decade, French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu has become an increasingly influential figure among contemporary cultural theorists interested in thinking critically about the relationship between sensory life and subjectivity. His work on the “skin ego” has been especially important in this regard. And while a growing number of scholars have sought to apply Anzieu’s work to a variety of objects and contexts, few have set themselves to the task of understanding the theoretical underpinnings that make it both intelligible and meaningful in psychoanalytic terms. With this in view, my paper will show that Anzieu’s approach is not only steadfastly Freudian and resolutely Kleinian but also defiantly anti-Lacanian. More specifically, it will demonstrate that his “psychoanalysis of skin” is characterised by a unique synthesis of Freud’s work on hysteria and Klein’s work on phantasy as well as by a spirited rejection of Lacan’s work on the linguistic structure of the unconscious. Having established his theoretical framework, I will then discuss how Anzieu understands and, ultimately, makes use of the four key concepts that constitute his approach: that is, the unconscious, the phantasmatic, the sensorimotor and the intersubjective. In the end, I will argue that it is precisely Anzieu’s imaginative rethinking and reworking of these four concepts that enables him to elaborate an essentially embodied account of human subjectivity.

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