Symbolizing Somatizations

Abstract

Since P. Party’s work, it has been believed that somatic illnesses arise in the processes of “progressive disorganization” which are translated to the psychic level by the blotting out of mental defenses and the neutralization of preconscious processes. Yet certain somatizations, nobably over the course of psychotherapy, seem to prove the exception to this rule and to be inscribed, on the contrary, in a movement of reorganization and of restoration of mental evolution. We will qualify them as “symbolic somatizations” to emphasize their likelihood to clear the way, in some way, through the intermediary of the sick body, for mental representations which were lacking until them to make psychic conflicts happen.