L'hypocondrie ou le corps ailleurs qu'en lui-même

Abstract

Whether hypochondriacal anxieties are accompanied or not by real somatic illness, they are not situated on the axis of a movement of the drive where, from hysteria to psychic disorganization in psychosomatic illness instinctual satisfactions can be negotiated. The inadequate mentalization in hypochondria displaces the body away from its relational domain, drawing it into a narcissistic problematic which does not belong to its logic. But it does not derive any benefit from the resulting hypercathexis, and it becomes, on the contrary, immobilized in the quantitative surcharge which deprives it of any momentum. Hypochondria comes, therefore, to rank amongst mental illnesses, but without really being one, as it is at times a turntable for pathological movements, and at times it remains fixed without evolving, as it fails to be the instrument of a solution.