7 The Disowned Body
When Breuer and Freud (1895) treated hysterical patients, they encountered people whose bodies seemed to be mysteriously out of their control. Such symptoms as paralysis, coughs, and bodily weakness without physical basis all seemed to reflect a body acting as though on its own. The clinical problem was to bring the body back under the control of the patient. When Freud (1923) defined the aim of psychoanalysis with his famous, pithy statement, "Where id was, there ego shall be," he made clear that command of the body was the very essence of psychoanalytic therapy. Thus, in a very real sense, mastery of the body and bodily urges has been a goal of the psychoanalytic process from the beginning of the field.
For Freud, of course, ...
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