Bodies, Anxieties and Phantasies in the Space of the Hospital: Aspects of the Psychoanalyst's Clinical Work from the Hospital

This paper offers some clinical illustrations which show the way the specialist with a psychoanalytical approach, works with the patients suffering by different somatic pathology, trying to manage their anxieties, during the entire period of hospitalization.

In a general hospital- not a psychiatric one- the body is the most exposed to a lot of maneuvers and investigations and it represents the main point of interest from the medical staff. Of course, there is not only the body. The physical sufferance of the patients goes together with a psychological one, many fears, conflicts and anxieties, which are quite handful, sometimes. The confrontation with the limits of body, with ‘the biological bedrock’ as Freud called, arouses in every of us a strong loss anxiety and in the background, the dead anxiety. This anxiety is present for the majority of patients, especially those with the severe and chronic affections.

The clinical illustrations presented by the author, show us the way in which the managing of the loss and dead anxieties helps the patients to do and continue the process of mourning, a process so important for the healing, or the diminishing of sufferance, physical and psychological, too.