(The Other Body of Anorexia)

The Other Body of Anorexia

Chair: Tamara Dellutri

Speaker: Dr Rodrigo Abínzano, PhD

What dimensions are needed to define a body?

Anorexia teaches us that one can suffer from a body that surpasses sensory and perceptual registers. This allows us to consider and explore beyond the body in front of us when we encounter the patient and their symptoms.

Since its beginnings, psychoanalysis has concerned itself with the body and its varied approximations. For Freud, it was the body of his hysterical patients that, through the mechanism of conversion, informed him of an unconscious's message. During this period, psychoanalysis began to engage with the presentation known as anorexia. These patients, some of whom were staunch in their attitude toward food, also incubated a particular way of relating to the image. Years later, Jacques Lacan constructed his concept of the mirror stage and enabled a reading of the anorexic body through its three registers (imaginary, symbolic, and real).

What body do these patients speak to us about? What can we say about the gap between the body that is seen and one that is spoken of or evoked? In our meetings, we will interrogate the particularities of the so-called "perceptual or dysmorphic distortions" that plague anorexic patients in order to understand what possible treatment psychoanalysis offers for them.

Dr Rodrigo V. Abínzano, PhD holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology, Master's degree in Psychoanalysis, and PhD in Psychology (UBA Buenos Aires Argentina). He is a Lecturer at the Adult Clinic (category 1), Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity Clinic, and works at the Uses of the Symptom department, faculty of Psychology (UBA), and he has been granted the UBACyT research fellowship in strategic topics (2019-2022). Dr Abínzano is also a full-time psychologist in the Adult Clinic (evening shift) at the C.S.M. Hospital No. 3 Arturo Ameghino Buenos Aires Argentina. He is the author of the books, Lecturas freudianas de la anorexia mental (2018) “Freudian Readings of Mental Anorexia”, Del alimento a la pulsion. Genealogía de la anorexia lacaniana (2021) “From Food to Drive: Genealogy of Lacanian Anorexia ”, and Pasión por la nada. La anorexia en la enseñanza de Lacan (2022) “Passion for Nothingness. Anorexia in Lacan's Teaching”. He is also co-author with Mauro Amor and Sofía Blank of Un retorno a los cuatro discursos. La clínica de los lazos sociales en el reverso del psicoanálisis (2024), “A Return to The Four Discourses. The Clinic of Social Bonds in the Reverse of Psychoanalysis”. He is a member of the Foro Argentino del Campo Lacaniano and so a member of the IF-EPFCL.

Tamara Dellutri, MA, LLM, is a Lacanian analyst, member of LACAN/UK, member of the Foro del Campo Lacaniano de México and member of the International of Forums: School of Psychoanalysis of the Forums of the Lacanian Field. She has a background in music, the visual arts and she has LLM in public health and law from the University of Bristol UK.

Tickets:

Full fee - £30

Reduced fee - £15

Low-wage / unequal financial zone / other financial limit - £10

Contact

events@lacanuk.org