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The first part of this paper traces, in Freud's writings of clinical cases of hysteria and in the body-voice of hysterical women, the juxtaposition of two languages, which do not listen to each other. At the same time, the body-voice of hysterical women is confirmed in Luce Irigaray's feminist theory, which brings to light the importance of the maternal and its corporal language.
In the second part of the paper, corporal language in the clinical experience of some women analysts with women patients is retraced in the attempt to interpret its significance in the light of the mother—daughter maternal experience. In this experience the body becomes a speaking subject in the analytical relation, refusing any interpretation and becoming in itself the narration of an archaic self, of a primary relation with the mother, the maternal language identified by Luce Irigaray in her theory.
The goal of this paper is to point out the shifting significance of body symptoms, above all women's, from the body symptoms interpreted according to oedipal theory to the body “listened to” in
Dr. Zanardi is Adjunct Professor of Psychology, New York University, New York; and a member of the Psychoanalytic Studies Association, Milan, Italy.
I would like to thank Dr. M. Sue Richardson (N.Y.U.) and Dr. Mirella Zanette (I.P.A.) for their thoughtful comments and encouragement.
its diverse symptomatologies as an expression of the impossibility of acquiring an identity and at the same time an affirmation of existence and a desire for subjectivity.