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    Consensuality: Didier Anzieu, gender and the sense of touch

    Segal, Naomi (2009) Consensuality: Didier Anzieu, gender and the sense of touch. GENUS: Gender in Modern Culture 12. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Rodopi. ISBN 9789042025868.

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    Abstract

    Book synopsis: The body is an emissary. We know little of our own feelings or the feelings of others, but that ignorance is mediated through our organ of touch, the skin. The term ‘consensuality’ stands for the co-presence of perceptions on the skin, which is the backcloth to sensation and thought. If the intelligence of the body is the basis of both sense and consent, consensuality also has to do with human relations based on the sense of touch, particularly the mother-child couple and the relation of desire, love and loss. This book touches on a range of cultural figures including Gide, Princess Diana, Kafka, Gautier and Rilke, and such films as Gattaca, The Talented Mr Ripley, Being John Malkovich, The Piano and The Truman Show, together with theories of the caress, phantom limbs and replacement children. Connecting all these is the work of psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu, who wrote on group psychology, psychodrama, psychic envelopes, creativity and thought; he also published a study of May ‘68 written from the heart of Nanterre. He was analysed by Lacan, not knowing at the time that the latter had treated Anzieu’s mother. His Le Moi-peau (The Skin-ego) shows how the psychic skin holds, protects and communicates but can also constrict or tear. If love enwraps and loss flays, how do we mourn?

    Metadata

    Item Type: Book
    Additional Information: An interdisciplinary study of 19c and 20c cultural figures and objects in relation to psychoanalysis, gender and the sense of touch.
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): consensuality, Anzieu, psychoanalysis, skin, touch, Gide, Diana, Rilke, replacement child, desire, love, loss, inside/outside, container, gender, surface, senses, sculpture
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Depositing User: Naomi Segal
    Date Deposited: 05 Oct 2012 11:14
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:31
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/5107

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