The Somatic vs. Libidinal Body: André Green and the Limits of Representation

The psychoanalytic body is never simply given. It is not reducible to flesh, organs, or physiology, even though it depends on them. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the body becomes meaningful only insofar as it is taken up into the psychic apparatus—inscribed, invested, and represented. André Green’s distinction between the somatic body and the libidinal body sharpens this insight by drawing attention to clinical situations in which this process of inscription falters. In such moments, the analyst is faced with a disconcerting uncertainty: what presents itself as “the body” may not be psychically available as such.

The libidinal body as an achievement

Freud’s early metapsychology already implies that the body as we encounter it in analysis is not identical with the biological organism. In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), he describes how the body becomes erotically organized through the progressive investment of erogenous zones. The infant does not begin with a unified bodily self; rather, bodily experience is fragmented, partial, and gradually coordinated through relations to others. Drives attach to zones, sensations become sources of excitation, and through repetition and relational mediation, these excitations begin to form representational networks.

Green radicalizes this Freudian premise. For him, the libidinal body is not simply the body invested by drives, but the body that has become representable—capable of being thought, fantasized, and symbolized. It is a body that can appear in dreams, in symptoms, in language. Crucially, this body depends on the presence of an other who receives, transforms, and reflects the infant’s states. Without such mediation, excitation remains unbound.

The somatic body, in contrast, refers to the organism in its biological functioning. It is not in itself accessible to analysis. Psychoanalysis only encounters the body insofar as it is psychically mediated. Yet Green insists that there are clinical situations in which this mediation is insufficient. In these cases, the analyst is confronted not with a richly symbolized bodily experience, but with something closer to the raw somatic register—an excitation that has not become meaning.

Failures of representation

What happens when the body is not psychically represented? Green’s work suggests that we must move beyond the classical model of repression. In neurosis, bodily symptoms are overdetermined: they are saturated with meaning, even if that meaning is unconscious. Conversion symptoms, for instance, translate psychic conflict into bodily form in a way that invites interpretation.

But there are patients for whom the problem is not that meaning is hidden, but that it has never been constituted. Their bodily experiences do not function as symbols. They do not “stand for” something else. Instead, they present themselves as opaque, intrusive, or inexplicable.

Clinically, this may take the form of somatic complaints that resist interpretation. The patient may report pain, fatigue, or dysfunction, yet these experiences are not accompanied by associative richness. There is no metaphorical expansion, no displacement into fantasy. The body does not speak—it insists.

In other cases, the absence is even more striking. Patients may describe a sense of bodily emptiness or unreality. The body is not a source of conflict or pleasure, but a kind of blank surface. This absence of investment points to a failure in the constitution of the libidinal body itself.

Green links such phenomena to early relational disruptions, particularly situations in which the primary object is psychically unavailable. In his formulation of the “dead mother complex” (Green, 1983), the caregiver is physically present but emotionally withdrawn. The infant, deprived of a responsive other, cannot establish stable links between excitation and representation. What is lost is not simply an object, but the very capacity to create meaning.

The clinical atmosphere of the unrepresented body

Working with patients whose bodily experience is unrepresented often involves a distinctive clinical atmosphere. Sessions may feel flat, repetitive, or strangely devoid of affect, even when intense bodily complaints are being described. The analyst may notice a lack of symbolic movement: interpretations do not resonate, associations do not unfold, and the transference may appear concrete or minimal.

In such contexts, the body may emerge in ways that bypass language. Somatic crises, sudden illnesses, or inexplicable physical states can interrupt the analytic process. These are not easily understood as formations of the unconscious in the classical sense. Rather, they may be seen as direct expressions of unmentalized excitation.

The notion of “operational thinking,” developed by Pierre Marty, is relevant here. Thought becomes pragmatic, descriptive, and disconnected from affective life. The patient speaks about the body as one might describe a machine, without metaphor or emotional depth. This is not resistance in the usual sense; it reflects a structural limitation in the capacity to symbolize (Marty, 1991).

“What are you dealing with?”

Green’s deceptively simple question—What are you dealing with?—becomes crucial in these situations. It is a question of diagnostic orientation, but also of technique and analytic stance.

If the analyst assumes that bodily material is symbolically structured when it is not, interpretation risks missing its mark. It may even be experienced as invasive or irrelevant. Conversely, if the analyst recognizes that the libidinal body is only tenuously established, the task shifts.

The aim is no longer primarily to uncover latent meaning, but to facilitate the emergence of representation itself. This involves a different kind of listening—one that is attuned not only to what is said, but to what cannot yet be said.

The analyst may find themselves naming affects that are only dimly perceived, linking bodily states to possible emotional contexts, or simply maintaining a presence that allows for the gradual binding of excitation. Transference, in such cases, may be less about symbolic repetition and more about the creation of a minimal relational matrix in which psychic life can take shape.

From soma to psyche

The movement from the somatic to the libidinal body is neither linear nor guaranteed. It is a fragile process, dependent on the patient’s capacity to tolerate emerging affect and the analyst’s capacity to contain what initially appears as non-meaning.

Over time, small shifts may occur. A bodily complaint acquires an associative link. A sensation becomes connected to a memory. An affect finds a name. These moments mark the beginning of symbolization—the gradual transformation of the body from a site of raw excitation into a field of meaning.

Yet this process also confronts the limits of psychoanalysis. Not all somatic phenomena can be fully psychized. Green’s work reminds us that there are domains where the psyche falters, where representation breaks down, and where the body remains, in part, outside meaning.

Concluding reflections

The distinction between the somatic and libidinal body does not propose a dualism, but a tension. It highlights the fact that the body as lived and spoken in analysis is a product of psychic work—work that can succeed, fail, or remain incomplete.

To ask “What are you dealing with?” is to remain attentive to this tension. It is to recognize that not every bodily manifestation is immediately interpretable, and that in some cases, the analytic task is more foundational: to help bring into existence a body that can be thought.

In this sense, Green’s contribution is both theoretical and ethical. It calls for a form of analytic humility—an acknowledgment that before meaning can be uncovered, it must sometimes be created.

References

Freud, S. (1905). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.

Green, A. (1983). Narcissism in Life and Death. London: Free Association Books.

Green, A. (1999). The Fabric of Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse. London: Routledge.

Marty, P. (1991). Mentalization and Psychosomatic Disorders. Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond.

McDougall, J. (1989). Theatres of the Body: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Psychosomatic Illness. New York: Norton.

Ulnik, J. (2007). Skin in Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac.