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Body Identity Disorders

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The Corporeal Identity

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Abstract

The expression “body identity disorders” refers to an imbalanced range of clinical symptoms that have in common the tendency to make self-esteem dependant on the body and on dissatisfaction with weight or with outward appearance. Conditions like anorexia, bulimia and obesity, despite each being different to the other, share a common origin: the weighing scales as a proof of significance. Images to brood over or more often to fear, outward appearances, in many cases are the credit card we use to put ourselves forward for assessment by others. Sometimes the unsympathetic other is our other self.

The demonic aspect of human rapports using bodies should not be ignored. We should try a little to consider this meaning of body inter-subjectivity. In other words, we should try - every time we think about the human body, the other’s body, the others’ bodies - to always be a little subtle, a little delicate, to feel how much we are fragile and in some ways vulnerable, through images of the body.

But this level of subtlety, this vast fi eld of body intersubjectivity, cannot be reached or touched by science without questions. For me, only literature is able to describe this world of delicate and fragile bodies.

[Barthes, Writings 1998, p.130]

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Elena Faccio

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Faccio, E. (2013). Body Identity Disorders. In: The Corporeal Identity. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5680-3_5

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