S05-01 - The Body in Distress [E22]

Abstract

Psychiatry deals with morbid psychological experience. This suggests that central to psychiatry's concern is the mind as opposed to the body. Yet, it is often the afflicted body rather than the mind that the patient presents to the clinician. In addiction, psychiatry classification has an underlying hierarchical bias for organic (somatic) disorders. Furthermore, many disorders such as generalised anxiety disorder and mood disorders have bodily manisfestations that are taken for granted in the consultation process or translated and relabelled as pointing towards psychological/emotional distress. This suggests that Cartesian mind-body dualism continues to significantly influence psychiatric concepts, classification and practice. In this presentation, the role of the body as model, metaphor, symbol, object and experiencing subject will be analysed with illustrative examples from clinical practice and literature. I will rely on Kafka's Letter to Father, Elfriede Jelinek's Piano Teacher, and Minkowsky's Lived Time.