The body in times of acceleration and delimitation

Abstract

This article discusses the evident popularity of the body as an expression of manipulative attacks on time-bound physicality or, to be more exact, the dialectics of aestheticizing and destructive body practices. The perspective is explicitly psychoanalytic-psychodynamic and claims neither to be a statement of totality nor does it draw on traditional empirical evidence. The topic is triggered by the fact that we are faced with a paradoxical situation: on the one hand, unimagined technical methods of perfecting the body are available as never before — body-shaping possibilities in the broadest sense — while, on the other, we are aware of the increase in grave, wordless self-destructive practices, such as eating disorders and self-harming. This article examines the complex interaction of the inner and outer world, and plumbs the depths of the unconscious to question why, in the late modern era, the body has become a stage on which intra-psychic and social productions are enacted. These theories are exemplified by means of clinical experience.