Abstract
The framework proposed by Pierre Marty and other analysts of the Paris Psychosomatic School is currently the hegemonic model of approach to somatic illness in Psychoanalysis. This framework is based on the hypothesis that organic disease would be associated with an insufficiency of the psychic elaboration capacity. Authors such as Sándor Ferenczi, Georg Groddeck and Donald Winnicott formulated conceptions about somatic illness that do not fit the French model. The objective of this article is to compare the contributions of these authors indicating that they reveal the existence of another framework of understanding of somatic illness in Psychoanalysis. A theoretical-conceptual study was carried out through the analysis of some texts of the three authors directly or indirectly related to somatic illness and the relationship between body and psyche. Research has shown that the conceptions of the authors present three main points of convergence: (1) a monistic conception of the individual in which body and psyche are understood as concomitant expressions of an integral reality; (2) the understanding of the psyche not as a machine of unloading excitations, but as an uninterrupted productive movement, which continually promotes an imaginative elaboration of the body; and (3) the understanding that illness is a relational phenomenon, which can only properly be understood in the light of the individual’s history and current context. These three points constitute the pillars of a framework that, unlike the French framework, emphasizes the complexity of somatic illness and is aligned with a health comprehensive model approach.
Keywords
Psychosomatic; Illness; Body; Psyche; Psychoanalysis