“This is my body… and I can do what I want with it.”

Author: Matthias Hirsch

Specifications: hardcover, 381 pp.

The continuing interest in the search for the psychoanalytic meaning of the body is connected both with the social context – reflections on the “attractiveness of the body” and the use of “cosmetic surgery”, as well as with various pathological manifestations, for example, self-harm and eating disorders. The main psychological content of these disorders is a person’s attempt to control his body as much as possible in order to avoid feelings of powerlessness and sacrifice the body or part of it in order to save his identity. To preserve their identity, people have always changed their bodies and manipulated them as their property, but at the same time, sometimes the body was treated extremely cruelly, as an object belonging to the outside world.


The book contains vivid clinical illustrations of often bizarre modern forms of treatment of the body, which are seen as manifestations of complex psychological relationships between people.