When the Body Displaces the Mind: Stress, Trauma and Somatic Disease

215 Pages·2007·1.217 MB·English

by  Jean Benjamin Stora

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WHEN THE BODY DISPLACES THE MIND
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WHEN THE BODY DISPLACES
THE MIND
STRESS, TRAUMA AND SOMATIC DISEASE
Jean Benjamin Stora
Foreword by Mark Solms
Translated by Sophie Leighton
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First published in 2007 by
Karnac Books Ltd.
118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2007 by Jean Benjamin Stora
English language copyright © Sophie Leighton 2007
The rights of Jean Benjamin Storato be identified as the author of this work
have been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
AC.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-85575-418-8
Typeset by Vikatan Publishing Solutions, Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
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CONTENTS
FOREWORD ix
Mark Solms
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi
Introduction 1
1 Emotions and traumas 9
2 The economic viewpoint and mentalisation processes 27
3 Amanda, Arnaud, Alice, Sandrine and Emma–
somatisations and regressions 55
4 Adrienne and Sanjay–progressive disorganisation and
somatisations: the emergence of irreversible unstable
equilibria 87
5 The psychotherapy of somatic patients–
the case of Nina, a woman from the Maghreb 125
v
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vi CONTENTS
APPENDICES 173
NOTES 181
BIBLIOGRAPHY 185
INDEX 197
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For Judith and Michael
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FOREWORD
The boundaries between disciplines have recently been seriously
challenged in the neurosciences. This has resulted, among other
things, in a realisation that the brain cannot be understood in isola-
tion from other bodily organs. This realisation, in turn, has produced
important advances in neuro-endocrinology and neuro-immunology,
to mention only the obvious instances. But certainly one of the most
significant advances brought about by this development has been in
the scientific understanding of emotion. Few neuroscientists today
would deny that the brain mechanisms of emotion (and drive) are
centrally embedded in brain: body relationships.
According to the currently dominant view, emotions are concep-
tualised as evaluative neural registrations of the visceral body’s cur-
rent state. This conceptualisation reflects the truism (all too easily
forgotten) that the essential function of the brain is to represent the
state of the body – of both its sensory end-organs and its endoge-
nous visceral detectors – and then, drawing on past experience, to
‘compute’ appropriate efferent responses to this state. These efferent
responses, no less than the inputs that trigger them, are of two types:
both external and internal. In the latter (internal) responses we find
the common origin of many (if not most) of the complex phenomena
that are grouped together clinically under the heading of ‘psychoso-
matic medicine’.
It is very much to the credit of contemporary neuroscience that it
has found a place for psychoanalysis in this interdisciplinary vortex,
and it is likewise fortunate indeed that psychoanalysis (under the
banner of ‘neuro-psychoanalysis’) has been able to rise to the occa-
sion, and make some significant contributions to the avalanche of
neuroscientific discoveries that are now reported almost daily. These
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