Abstract
In this chapter, the ambiguities and tensions of human embodiment will be addressed from a psychoanalytical perspective, notably building on the work of Jacques Lacan, who distinguishes three realms or registers of bodily experience, three basic ways in which the human body comes to the fore and may be encountered in various practices, namely the real body, the imaginary body and the symbolic body. The real body is basically a fragmented body: a composite aggregate of organs, fluids, processes and products. The imaginary body refers to the body as a meaningful, aestheticised whole. Finally, the symbolic body is the body as it emerges in modern scientific research practices, measured, qualified and quantified with the help of biomedical equipment.
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Notes
- 1.
This was already pointed out by Freud: “Die Pathologie lehrt uns [Fälle] kennen, in denen uns Teile des eigenen Körpers … wie fremd und dem Ich nicht zugehörig erscheinen” (1930/1948, pp. 423–424).
- 2.
This register of bodily experience was opened up by Sanctorius (1561–1636), founding father of iatrophysics, whose notes on medical statics—De Medicina Statica Aphorismis—were published in 1614, after having spent 30 years of his life in a weighing chair, carefully measuring the effects of food intake and other daily habits on body weight, comparing it with the weight of waste products such as urine and faeces (Van den Berg 1961; Zwart 2016).
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Zwart, H.A.E. (2019). The Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic: Lacan’s Understanding of Embodiment. In: Purloined Organs. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05354-3_4
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