3rd lecture

Experiencing the Body: Freud’s Body-Centered Mind

This lecture, titled "Experiencing the Body: Freud: A Body Centered Mind," was delivered on May $4, 2026$ , by Prof. Dr. Gamze Özcürümez Bilgili as part of a Psychosomatics course. The session explores the psychoanalytic understanding of the intersection between physical existence and mental processes, as established by Sigmund Freud and expanded upon by later researchers. The content references specific works of art, including David Dawson’s photograph of Lucian Freud working at night ( $2005$ ), and several of Lucian Freud’s paintings, such as "Naked Portrait with Reflection" ( $1980$ ), "Nude with Leg Up" ( $1992$ , # $119$ ), "Sleeping by the Lion Carpet" ( $1995$ - $1996$ ), "Self-Portrait (Reflection)" ( $2002$ ), and "Girl with White Dog" ( $1950$ - $1951$ ). These artistic representations serve as a visual backdrop to the investigation of how the body is experienced and represented within the mind.

Dualism versus Monism

A fundamental question in the study of psychosomatics is whether one can explore the mind without attention to the bodily contexts in which mental activities occur. Freud explicitly rejected the dualistic view, which posits a strict separation between mind and body. Instead, Freud approached the mind as something central, but he viewed the bodily—the emotional and subjective aspects of existence—as being integral to that mental life. In Freud’s view, while bodily aspects may "work according to different rules" than those of rational and logical thought, they are nonetheless part of a singular psychic reality. This rejection of dualism frames the mind not as an abstract entity, but as a system deeply rooted in physiological and lived experience.

The Bodily in the Mind

Freud argued that bodily aspects are found in patterns of lived experience, such as memories of having lunch at nursery school or fantasies of becoming a big-game hunter. These experiences proceed by mechanisms of displacement and condensation. While these processes are considered primitive and organized differently than rational thought, their status as primitive does not exclude them from the mind. Freud hypothesized that psychic functions, psychic organs, and psychic agencies spring from a concrete basis in organic functioning. A specific example provided by Freud is that moral control over thoughts is actually formed on the basis of sphincter control over the feces.

One of the central questions regarding the bodily in the mind is the origin and basis of the ego. Freud posited that the ego is ultimately derived from the surface of the body. This surface allows the individual to distinguish between excitations of external origin and those of internal origin. A capital function of the ego is the ability to distinguish between what belongs to the self and what does not; this includes differentiating between one’s own desires and thoughts versus the affects of others, and between physical/biological reality and inner reality.

Conceptualizing the Bodily in Freud’s Oeuvre

Throughout Freud’s work, the term "bodily" is often used without specific clarification, referring to several distinct categories of experience. It can refer to "concrete" thought focused on sense-based physical reality, or to bodily symptoms that reflect emotional experiences. It can also describe sensations arising from specific body parts, biological influences on the mind such as hormonal changes, or the construction of bodily self-images.

Freud emphasized the stability of these bodily aspects of experience through the term "stereotype plates." These are patterns that may be "constantly repeated—constantly reprinted afresh—in the course of a person's life" (Freud, $1912$ , p. $100$ ). These plates are figural, appearing as images in memory, dreams, or fantasies. Their origin in familial "impressions" indicates that they possess an interpersonal character. Various theorists have integrated this concept into their own frameworks:

Kernberg integrated object relations and drive theories, identifying stereotype plates as comprising self and object representations and the affects that join them.
Attachment theorists, such as Goldberg, Muir, and Kerr ( $1995$ ), refer to these as "Internal Working Models," which pattern experience and behavior.
Loewald ( $1971$ ) focused on the early period of nondifferentiation and referred to these as "mother-child psychic units."
Daniel Stern ( $1985$ ) referred to them as "patterns of lived experience," encompassing all these characteristics.

Anxiety and the Borderland of Physiology

In Freud’s $1926$ work, "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety," he describes anxiety as a reproduction of an affective state in accordance with an already existing mnemic image. He argued that anxiety is not newly created during repression but is revived like a mnemic symbol. When investigating the origin of such affects, Freud stated that one leaves the realm of pure psychology and enters the "borderland of physiology." Affective states are incorporated into the mind as "precipitates of primaeval traumatic experiences."

In a traumatic situation, the excessive quantity of excitation gives rise to massive anxiety. Freud defines trauma as an infantile situation involving a breaking through of the subject’s protective shield against stimuli. It is characterized by "helplessness," where physical unpleasure—such as wetness, hunger, or sleepiness—becomes psychic distress the moment the mother or caregiver fails to appear. This automatic or traumatic anxiety is chiefly somatic in nature.

Freud and Damasio: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis

Freud’s somatic definition of automatic anxiety aligns with Antonio Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis (SMH). According to Damasio ( $1994$ ), somatic markers are emotional reactions with a strong somatic component that support decision-making based on previous experiences. Research by Damasio et al. ( $2000$ ) indicates that reliving strong negative emotions causes significant changes in brain areas that receive signals from the muscles, gut, and skin, such as the insular cortex, secondary somatosensory cortex, cingulate cortex, and nuclei in the brainstem tegmentum and hypothalamus. These regions regulate basic bodily functions and receive signals from the internal milieu, viscera, and musculoskeletal frame.

Somatic markers function as automated "gut feelings" when an individual faces problems with potential positive or negative outcomes. Neuroimaging has shown that recalling emotional memories causes individuals to re-experience the visceral sensations from the original event. These bodily sensations are juxtaposed with the brain’s capacity to image events, thereby modifying future behavior and decision-making efficiency.

Trauma and "The Body Keeps the Score"

Bessel van der Kolk ( $2014$ ) builds on these ideas by stating that "the body keeps the score." He argues that the elementary self-system in the brainstem and limbic system is massively activated when people face a threat of annihilation. This results in overwhelming fear accompanied by intense physiological arousal. The memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera, manifesting as autoimmune disorders, skeletal/muscular problems, and "gut-wrenching" emotions. Consequently, the mind and body remain constantly aroused as if in imminent danger, which may trigger freezing or dissociation as desperate attempts to shut down these overwhelming feelings.

Bodily Maps of Emotions

A study by Nummenmaa, Glerean, Hari, and Hietanen (PNAS, January $14, 2014$ ) titled "Bodily Maps of Emotions" provides evidence that emotions are represented in the somatosensory system as culturally universal categorical somatotopic maps. In experiments involving $n = 701$ participants from West European and East Asian samples, individuals were asked to color silhouette bodies to indicate regions where they felt activity increasing or decreasing while viewing emotional stimuli. The results showed that different emotions (Anger, Fear, Disgust, Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Neutral, Anxiety, Love, Depression, Contempt, Pride, Shame, Envy) are consistently associated with statistically separable bodily sensation maps. These maps suggest that the perception of emotion-triggered bodily changes plays a key role in generating conscious emotional experiences. The scale of activity in these maps ranges from $-15$ to $15$ for different emotional feedback.

Embodied Affectivity and Resonance

Emotions are experienced through "bodily resonance," a concept related to Damasio’s somatic markers. William James ( $1884$ ) famously described the body as a "sounding-board" in which every emotion reverberates. Embodied affectivity involves a cycle between the subject and the environment. "Affection" (to be moved or impression) is a centripetal process resulting in interoceptive and proprioceptive feedback. "Emotion" (to move or expression) is a centrifugal process mediated by expressive ability.

Interaffectivity (or interbodily resonance) occurs between the self and others through mirroring and complementing movements, body awareness, and kinaesthetic empathy. These phenomena are psychotherapeutically important in concepts such as somatic countertransference. The interpersonal system integrates expression and impression functions between individuals to create a shared emotional resonance.

Primary and Secondary Processes

Freud suggested two major frameworks for including the bodily in the mind. The first is the primary-secondary process model, where body-based thought is rooted in the drives. In this model:

Primary Process: Rooted in the drives, associated with the id and the unconscious. It is developmentally and clinically primitive, characterized by chaos, egocentricity, and the pleasure principle. It originates in infants who are sensitive only to their own bodily stimuli.
Secondary Process: Replaces the primary process over time. It is body-free, logical, and rational, associated with the ego and the reality principle. It begins to emerge around age $2$ and allows for objective, impersonal thought and sound judgment.

The development from the "Somatic Self" to the "Psychological Self" involves a transition from soma to psyche, outside to inside, and doing to thinking. In maturity, the secondary processes exert control over the body-based primary ones. Thinking is described as a "deferred action"—an act that takes the pleasure principle into the service of the reality principle, which may be perceived as a "painful action" (Anzieu, $1994$ ). A gap often remains between mind and body, where a "mysterious leap" must occur for the mental to supplant the bodily.

Mental Representation and Psychosomatics

The second, more radical view of the bodily in the mind refers to the "mental representation" of actual bodily experiences. Here, the mature mind is not body-free but is a body-based organization of sophisticated patterns of experience. Freud defined psychoanalysis in $1922$ as a method of obtaining insight into the complications of mental life and the interrelations between the mental and physical.

Freud's early patients often sought medical help for physical symptoms they believed to be physiological illnesses. Freud proposed that these patients maintained psychic health until an event awakened painful feelings that the ego was compelled to "forget," resulting in psychic conflicts. Facilitated by a "constitutional capacity for conversion," these patients made a transposition from the psychic to the somatic realm. Freud identified two models for somatic symptoms:

Hysterical Conversion Model: Unconscious instinctual demands or forbidden thoughts are repressed and expressed physically. This involves a "somatic compliance" where a bodily organ is used as a vehicle for psychic meaning, creating a compromise formation.
Anxiety Equivalent (Actual Neurosis) Model: Somatic symptoms result from physical sensations that have been denied access to the psychic apparatus. These are sensory experiences that fail to be mentalized. This is not a representation of psychical activity but an indication that psychic activity has failed to occur. Freud noted that disturbances in respiration often accompany or mask such anxiety. In $1916$ / $1917$ , Freud concluded that "actual" neuroses offer psychoanalysis no points of attack and must be left to biologico-medical research.

Case Study: Anna O.

Anna O., a patient treated by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud (documented in "Studies on Hysteria"), exhibited wide-ranging symptoms including:

Paralysis: Located in her right arm and leg.
Involuntary eye movements: Including vision problems.
Hydrophobia: An aversion to food and water that prevented her from drinking for days.
Lethargy: Being bed-bound for extended periods.
Language Difficulties: She would repeat the last word of a sentence and pause. A polyglot, she spoke in various languages (including English to confusion of her carers) but was eventually unable to speak at all for two weeks.

Her symptoms illustrate the "leap" from the psychic to the somatic that characterizes the conversion models Freud explored in his early work.