A Preliminary Study of the Bodily -Ego in Clinical Psychology

シンリ リンショウ ニ オケル シンタイ ジガ コウサツ ノ ココロミ

Kamijo, Shie

オオサカ ダイガク ダイガクイン ニンゲン カガク ケンキュウカ キョウイクガクケイ

Department of Education, Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University

Recently, the issues regarding body awareness have been paid attention to in the practice of psychotherapy, We usually use our body without being conscious about our muscle functions and the endocrine and nervous systems. It might be possible to say that we have a vast unconscious component inside our body as well as mind. Freud referred to the relationships among the ego, internal perception, and surface skin in his early works on the theory of the ego. Jung also mentioned the importance of the body in which our minds dwell. However, both of them did not pursue the issues concerning the body, because they paid much attention to the mind. In this study, the author reviewed the theories about the body advanced by Freud and Jung and discussed the idea of the “bodily-ego." The possibility of verbalization regarding the experience of the bodily-ego as well as the ego seems to be the turning point in achieving the objective of integration. The author also pointed out the existence of a relationship between the ego and the surface skin and discovered a special function of tactile sensation. The case reports by the author propose that bodily sensations spread inside our bodies through the permeable membrane of the bodily-ego and the tactile function. The deterioration of body awareness leads to the destruction of the relationship between the body and the ego. Clients who projected their ego on the self-injured cuts and scars were found to experience unstable adjustment funcions. This result clarified that both the ego and the bodily-ego are crucial aspects of mental health as they form the foundation of our bodily health.