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Biomedical subjects

E Torras de Beà

Publications and source records attributed to E Torras de Beà.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

Projective identification and differentiation.

A piece of psychoanalytical treatment is used to present projection or projective identification as the activation of inner experience in the recipient and as the mechanism basic to all human interaction. The patient activates inner experience in his psychoanalyst and the result of the subsequent interaction will depend both on the ability of the psychoanalyst to reorganize his own internal experience, connect it with words and consciousness and convey this new knowledge and meaning to the patient, as well as the response of the patient. This clinical material is also used to define differentiation (which involves linking) and dissociation as two opposing functions, the former being fundamental, in the author's view, to the communicative and empathetic function of projective identification and the latter to the defensive aspect of projective identification. Direct experience and recent research about the capacities of newborn babies support the author's view that the capacity to differentiate is a primary function existing from birth in the quiet, alert state. This is the fundamental structuring function in healthy emotional and intellectual evolution. Dissociation, on the other hand, is used when anxiety becomes intolerable, but if the dissociation is not excessive or too sustained then normal evolution is not disturbed.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Body schema and identity.

The author describes the body schema as the representation of the body in the mind which is organized throughout the process of development and has the characteristics of an internal object. She describes it as constantly fluctuating between the levels of symbol and of symbolic equation. As to the genesis of the body schema, she describes the relationship of the child with its parents and, in particular, with the mother, as the site of origin of the body schema. She also mentions the importance of the functioning body and hence of the sensorimotor period for the development of the body schema and of self-object differentiation. Finally, discussing body schema and identity, she describes the relations between these two entities and with the self, as relationships of mutual containment and representation. She relates these concepts to Klein's theory of the "assembly of internalized objects'. She then turns to psychopathology, which she regards as the results of a mutual invasion between the body schema, identity and the self. She gives a number of clinical examples to illustrate various aspects of psychopathology and of the relations between body schema and identity.

Anorexia Nervosa↗