From the skin ego to the psychic envelope: An introduction to the work of Didier Anzieu

Abstract

In works like The Skin Ego, A Skin for Thought and Psychic Envelopes, French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu presents an unprecedented account of the relationship between mind and body. In this unique approach to human subjectivity, Anzieu sees the body’s surface-its skin-as a crucial constituent of the mind’s structures and functions. As biographer Catherine Chabert (1996) points out, Anzieu’s work on skin and subjectivity has won him widespread recognition as one of France’s most important proponents of psychoanalytic theory and practice. Despite his importance, however, Anzieu is less well-known to Anglo-American cultural theorists than his now legendary predecessor Jacques Lacan. That is, unlike Lacan’s abstract, language-centered theories, Anzieu’s more concrete, body-centered theories are often unfamiliar to or overlooked by those outside the French-speaking world.1 In what follows, then, I provide a brief introduction to Anzieu’s “psychoanalysis of skin." I begin by contextualizing his work while explaining how it is in many respects a response to Lacan and what became known in late twentieth-century France as le lacanisme.