[...]*one the ghostly double of the other's absence** [~ condition of the art] @Mohaghegh


****the phantom: expression of nostalgia for the unity and wholeness of the body (its completion)**** = a psychical delegate ==> physical + psychical wound and scar in the amputation or surgical intervension into any part of the body
[*]phantom: narcissistic reassertion of the limb's presence in the face of its manifest biological loss --> (an attempt to preserve) the subject's narcissistic sense of bodily wholeness [--Lacan--> an images developed through the mirror stage]
--> artist's dream and relation to the wound(= cumbersome narcissistic compensation for the broken unity of the biological body) @Elen
#archive: a psychical attempt to reactivate a past body image in place of the present reality [--> how can we accept the reality? @Pierre, Sina, Hoda,]

(Grosz raising the general question of:) the status of the *body image of woman*--insofar as women are considered and consider themselves to have suffered an amputation (implied by castration) more debilitating than most --> *do women have a phantom phallus?* what is the women's status of a fantasized amputation?

Grosz: “amputee's relations to the phantom limb =?! woman's mourning for what has been lost (the freedom, self-determination, autonomy accorded to the male body, etc. #harem)”
--> ***until female genitals (women's bodies) are inscribed and lived (by the subject and by others) as a positivity, there will always remain paradoxes and upsetting implication for any notion of femininity***



infant's body not yet a self-contained entity, not yet distinct and separate from the world --> child: a body and its various sensations are projected onto the world, and conversly the world and its vicissitudes are introjected into the body of the subject-to-be ==> child: slowly and gradually the body image IS constructed and invested in stages of libidinal developement:
•oral stage ==> mouth
•anal stage ==> anus
•
each stage augmenting and reorienting the preceding stages: anal take over the intensity of the oral, but the mouth remains significant even it no longer dominates the child's sensations ==> each stage participants in the production and differentiation of the body image)

libidinalization of bodily zones, organs, and functions ==builds==> body image particular form

child's body, an already sexually designated body (which culture's desires, wishes, fears, hopes are projected and internalized, mother/nurturer's successes and failures, ambitions and disappointments are most readily projected and played out = sources for self-worth and sexual value)

[*]puberty: greatest discord between the body image (psychical idealized self-image) and the lived body (bodily changes) --> the adolescent body is commonly experienced as awkward, alienating, an undesired biological imposition : *pubertal developement (date of teenagehood) ==> philosophical desire to transcend corporeality and its urges*

-it is only in adolescence that it becomes clear (wanted or not) that the subject has a sexual position (~ genital position)
-during puberty, gentials and secondary sexual characteristics become definitive objects of consciousness and only bit by bit acquire representation in the body image

***in the refusal of sexual roles ordinated by heterosexuality,(for example gay men and lesbians) -->
•may perversely cling to preadolescent body images (--> to remain ambiguous regarding the differences between the sexes)
•invest greater intensity in erotogenic sites, making them the center of libidinal attention and narcissistic investment (Janina's room) (--> in effect reinscribing them in *a mode of resistance*)
}--> oral, anal, sadistic impulses, tactility, scopophilia, “sexual perversions” =? (to emphasize and cultivate) a mode of defiance to heterosexist requirements
[@Sina, the images that i have been clinging to are in the body image that i think i am refusing or inscribing: pony, unicorn, rainbow, skull, the childish bracelet i found in the park, etc.]


ماليخوليا
hypochondria خودبيمارانگارى
a Freudian problem: to describe the transference of libido from the external world and love objects to the subject's own body in illness
-treating nongenital zones as if they had taken on genital meaning = (in the case of hysteria) hysterogenic zone takes on a sexual, usually phallic, function
*hypochondria: chronic and abnormal anxiety abour imaginary symptoms = a flight against narcissim* (the individual defends himself against the libidinous overtension of the hypochondriac organ --> to treat it like a foreign bosdy in the body image)
[hypochondria =/= narcissim]
hypochondriac tries to expel from the body image but cannot because the zone is overinvested with libido =/= خوددگربینی depersonalization = psychical transformation of the body image*, subject lose interest in the whole body, they refuse or are afraid to invest any narcissistic libido in the body image
-depersonalization might account for the phenomenon of out-of-body experience (the outside world is also experienced as flat and disinvested از خود بی خود / فنا؟)
depersonalization: a kind of psychical mimicry of the organic structure of dizziness --> narcissistic decathexis [withdrawal of psychic energy] of the subject's own inclination to voyeurism (<-- disinvestment in the processes of self-observation) ==> seeing has no longer any value : the subject now seen or sees itself with no libidinal investment in looking (or being looked at) @Sina, Foad

_*hysteria --> transformation of body image (of the meaning of the sexual zones to other organs which are not usually associated with genitality)
_*hypochondria --> transposition of libido (displacement, from one organ to another, from the genital to other parts of the body)
_*depersonalization --> withdrawal of libido from privileged zones (often from the whole body)

}==> ****تغيير پذيرى lability of meaning for bodily organs**** : any zone of the bady can (under certain circumstances) take on the meaning of any other zone
[stabil =/= labil: transient, apt to slip]

neurosis & psychosis: subject's sexual life is transposed from its socially expected locations, aims, and onjects to elsewhere

-life history of the subject: the systems of psychical meaning and the events rendered meaningful
-body: the history of the subject's explorations and practices + its various accidents and illnesses

(@Sina) breathing difficulties --> (hysterical symptoms for) significance of the public/private division ~ inside/outside division
•visible disorders --> some kind of message *to others* is being transmittes
•invisible disorders --> some kind of message *to another signifier* is being transmittes #Lacan


hypochondria + depersonalization + hysteria ==[through the mediation of body image]==> *the biological or organic body is open to psychical meanings* ~ psychic processes rely on various organic connections (it takes them as its raw material, as its model of expression)

disease (<==)transforms==> body image (<==)affects==> subject's psychological state

body image: mediating position between the organic and the psychical : it is by affecting, modifying, transforming the body image that each (organic & psychical) is able to effect transformation in the other


***Freud's prediction: man would become a prosthetic god*** [~= Iron Man]

body image = (function of) psychology + sociohistorical context + anatomy
the body image is extremely fluid and dynamic : its borders, edges, and contours are osmotic (تراوش کننده), they have the remarkable power of incorporating and expelling outside and inside in an ongoing interchange --> *social*

Schilder's “zones of sensitivity”: bodily orifices + its sensation experienced about one centimeter from the opening (-for example how the diseases of internal organs are not experienced in their precise anatomical locations)
*zones outside the body* --> intrusion into this bodily space is considered as much a violation as penetration of the body itself, the size and form of this surrounding space of safety is individually, sexually, racially, and culturally variable [--> #clean and dirt for my mother; my body image outside space surrounding it when i am in my room is the room itself, every corner, every niche accumulates senses and thoughts...]
the space surrounding the body is not uniform:
-[...]