STRUCTURATION METAPHORIQUE DU CORPS ET IDENTITE DANS L'ANOREXIE MENTALE

The author explores the relations between personal identity and symbolic bodily structuring, as revealed by semantic-praxiological analysis in patients suffering from anorexia nervosa. In particular, he analyses the bodily practices of the patients and their families, the individual body scheme, bodily identity and psychic identity. It becomes apparent that at each level of analysis (individual, familial and socio-cultural) other aspects of identity are revealed. Some structural connections, rooted in spatio-temporal metaphors, exist however between all these aspects. This type of semantic-praxiological analysis is a novel and promising key to the understanding of the process of somatization. It also offers a better insight into the articulation of the biological, cultural and psychic levels which go to make up the individual identity.