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
