The Aesthetic Link: The Patient’s Use of the Analyst’s Body and the Body of the Consulting Room

Abstract

This paper describes work with two patients who experienced an early undercathexis of the body-self. It explores the relationship between this type of deficit and the use made by the patient of the analyst’s body and by extension of the body of the analytic room. I propose that in work with patients who have experienced an early undercathexis of the body-self, it is vital to identify those instances when the patient tries to make an “aesthetic link” with the analyst. This refers to how the patient may apprehend by the senses (aesthetic) a feature of the analyst’s physicality, or of the physical space of the consulting room, and uses it to make a connection (link) with an as yet unrealized and wished-for embodied self that for some time can only be experienced through an identification with aspects of the analyst’s body/room. This has technical implications; I suggest that interpretation of what can appear to be an idealized and/or erotic transference, but is in fact the patient’s attempt to establish an aesthetic link, can be experienced as disorganizing and as undermining of a developmental thrust.

Keywords:

• analytic setting
• body
• body-self
• analyst’s body
• transference.

Notes

¹ We commonly use the term “aesthetic” to capture the notion of concern for art and beauty or the perception of art and beauty. This sense of aesthetic is a modern one devised by Alexander Baumgarten in 1735 and differs subtly from how I am using the term.

² The notion of primary homosexuality, refers to a time when the “maternal imago is idealized rather than sexualized” (Perelberg, 2013, p. 605). The attachment between the baby and mother is understood to be sexual but not gendered, so that the concept applies equally to both sexes.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alessandra Lemma

Alessandra Lemma, MA, MPhil, DClin is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Anna Freud National Center for Children and Families. She is Visiting Professor, Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London; and Visiting Professor, Istituto Winnicott, Sapienza University of Rome and “Centro Winnicot,” Rome. For many years she worked at the Tavistock Clinic where she was, at different points, Head of Psychology and Professor of Psychological Therapies. She is the Editor of the New Library of Psychoanalysis book series (Routledge) and the author of several books.