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This book deals with the issue of body modification as it serves the function of rescuing the self from an alien presence felt to reside within the body (the reclaiming phantasy) or the function of creating a perfect, ideal body that will guarantee the other's love and desire (the perfect match phantasy). The author notes that skin markings cannot be reduced to one single meaning or function, “and that they are not intrinsically a symptom of pathology.”
Individuals who have taken body modification to extremes are managing psychic conflicts by physical expression including maintaining boundaries of the body and ego and allowing the individual to feel intact and coherent. The central organizing function of skin sensations acts as a primary bodily container. Body modification is a means of anchoring the self by permanently marking the body.
A substantial portion of this book deals with theoretical concepts related to the mother-child relationship and how the baby acquires a perception of a bodily surface through the contact with the skin of the mother—the “skin ego” or common skin. Lemma draws on a variety of psychoanalytic theoretical approaches in discussing touch, vision and body contact in relationship to the mother-baby dyad and this most necessary of the earliest attachment bonds. She uses a wide range of theoretical frameworks but is firmly rooted in the British object relational model.
The text is replete with information related to the psychic understanding of beauty and ugliness as they relate to the formation of internal psychic structures and the information conveyed to the baby in the narcissistic union with the mother and the need to renounce this union to become his/her own person, living in her/his own body and mind.
The author draws on art and literature to illustrate her material and the clinical examples presented provide an avenue for exploration of theoretical material as well as a practical approach to therapy. For example, she writes, “What may be