Between Skins (eBook)

Dr Nicola Diamond is a Senior Lecturer in Psychosocial Studies, University of East London, and teaches at the Tavistock Clinic. She is also a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist with the British Association of Psychotherapists (British Psychoanalytic Council registered) in private practice, and runs a clinic at The Helen Bamber Foundation; before this she worked as a Psychotherapist at the Women's Therapy Centre in London. She is the co-author of Attachment and Intersubjectivity (with Mario Marrone, 2003) and has published widely in the field.

Introduction 1

Part I The Framework: Neuroscience and Interdisciplinary Connections 11

1 Introducing Interdisciplinary Connections 13

2 Nurture/Nature 29

3 Bodily Expression and Language Relations 38

4 Setting the Scene: The Problem of the Binary Divide 51

Part II The Vital Order: Moving Away from Interiority and Biology as Bedrock 59

5 The Vital Order and the Biological Functions: Going Back to the Fundamental Problem 61

6 The Problem of Dualism and the Division between the Vital and the Psychic Order 74

7 The Vital Revisited: Deconstructing the Vital Order from Within 77

8 Rebuilding the Vital Field 90

9 Body Memory and Know-How 101

10 Attachment and Sexuality: Regulation versus Deregulation 109

Part III Exteriority: The Body Surface 119

11 The Skin: An Introduction 121

12 Didier Anzieu and The Skin Ego 137

13 Permeable Skin 147

14 The Emergence of Skin as a Support Matrix 154

15 Skin Narratives 162

16 Skin Relation 173

17 Skin Writing and Touch as Analogous to Language 179

18 Psychosomatics and Conversion: The Question of the Symbol 189

Conclusion: Have We Reached a Destination? 208

References and Further Reading 217

Index 226

"How successful Diamond is in "solving" the
dilemmas she detects is an open question, but her questions and
thinking are intelligent and searching, and this book will be good
for teaching and dialogue in the field. Summing Up:
Recommended. Graduate, research, and professional
collections." (Choice, 1 November 2013)

Nicola Diamond is both an academic and a clinician. She has a
multi-disciplinary background in psychoanalysis, attachment theory,
developmental psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and sociology.
She is known for her original thinking and the way she challenges
Cartesian dualism in psychoanalysis. In this book Nicola Diamond
provides us with a refreshing approach to the body-mind-society
relationship and its clinical implications, particularly in
relation to interpersonal trauma and its bodily
manifestations.--Mario Marrone, British
Psychoanalytical Society and International Attachment
Network

This is a book that offers an innovative model of the body which
establishes a relation between soma and culture. It is a
fascinating read - not only helpful for a psychoanalytic
context and the clinical field, but also for psychosocial studies
scholars interested in body image and the processes of fantasy that
shape our experience of the lived body in everyday life. The book
raises important questions about how sensory lived body states and
body image are profoundly influenced not only by relations with
others, but also by the social field of visual imaging and popular
culture.--Dr. Candida Yates, Reader in Psychosocial
Studies, University of East London.

Nicola Diamond has always pioneered the integration
of academic, clinical and theoretical issues and a book
from her is long-awaited. "Between Skins" is an unusual and
ambitious book linking the psychoanalytic, attachment theory,
biological science and properly focusses on the multi-layered
feelings of skin and body processes. Like Orbach and her concepts
of the transitional body, Diamond's psychoanalytic strength also
comes through.--Dr.Valerie Sinason M.Inst
Psychoanal, Director for The Clinic for Dissociative
Studies.