No: 30 / THE OLD BODY: THE DYNAMISM AND FRAGILITY OF INSTINCT FATES WHEN CONFRONTED WITH GROWING OLD

  • THE OLD BODY: THE DYNAMISM AND FRAGILITY OF INSTINCT FATES WHEN CONFRONTED WITH GROWING OLD

    Benoit Verdon
    Translated by: Gizem Kural Hatipoğlu
    Summary :

    The experience of the crossing of aging and old age mobilizes the body in a major way: bodily harm gradually settles down, the boundaries between health and illness fade, the good health of the older adult is not complete, the aged body is not a whole body. Moreover, the evidence of an organic body which, as if deserted from its passions, takes the lead of the psychic scene and reminds the human being of its biological vulnerability, its concrete and perishable anatomical substratum, tends to minimize the role of the human body. Psychic body, body of power and seduction, in search of shoring and fearing burglary, erotic body support representations of relations to oneself and the object. To test this apparent priority, we opted for the in-depth analysis of two Rorschach protocols contrasted by sex and the organization of psychic functioning (a 75-year-old woman with a hysterical normal-neurotic personality, a 78-year-old man with obsessive-compulsive normalo-neurotic personality, both with no medical history or cognitive impairment). This qualitative study centered on two singular cases allows the detailed illustration of the treatment modalities of loss and excitation. It appears that the body, modified by the effects of time, can remain heavily invested on the one hand with its sexual potentiality, where male and female intersect. The difficulty of renouncing control and of investing peacefully in passive female positions, without danger of burglary meets the vivacity and fragility of destinies of impulses.

    Keywords : Body, Aging, Aged Body, Psychosomatic, Sexuality, Rorschach, Instinct.