Le psychisme, le corporel et le somatique

Abstract

The author puts forward the idea that while the ontological dualism of body and mind must be contested, it is the epistemological dualism of the psychic and the somatic that gives its substance to Freud's model of anaclisis. Clinical practice initially addresses the bodily experience, but reducing this to hysteria and the neuroses avoids the questions of both somatisation and hypochondria. Furthermore, the theory of addictions and of the effects of chemotherapies requires the complex models of the circular relations between the somatic and the psychic. The necessary abandonment of a unified monistic theory gives way to the modesty of various forms of dualism while leaving open the question of their articulation.