The Unconscious Body Image espouses a completely original view of the links between physical and psychic development, providing fresh insight into our understanding of psychosomatic symptoms and child development.

Françoise Dolto describes how unconsciously held mental images of the body and its functioning impact upon the subject’s feelings and ideas of themself, and conversely how emotions and ideas impact upon the body’s functioning by way of these unconscious images. The Unconscious Body Image also presents Dolto’s view of the development of mind in relation to unconscious body images generated at each stage of development (oral, anal, genital, latency and puberty), and ideas about psychic castration at each developmental stage and children’s socialisation, filling a significant gap in psychoanalytic understanding of the mental integration of social law.

This book will be a key text for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, particularly those working with children, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and psychodynamic practitioners in the social sciences, childcare and education.