Some thoughts between body and mind in the light of Wilma Bucci’s multiple code theory

Abstract

The author proposes the usefulness of Wilma Bucci’s Multiple Code Theory in clarifying some controversial issues in psychoanalytically inspired psychosomatics. Definition of a dialectic among different entities may appear difficult in an unitarian view of the organism, where body and mind are seen as having no kind of intrinsic existence, which may be differentiated from the organism as a whole, but as two categories having to do with the perspective of the observer. This aporia may find a solution in a redefinition of the body–mind relationship as that between symbolic systems and the subsymbolic system, both of which may be viewed as mind or as body depending on the point of observation. Similarly, somatic pathology, if we accept an unitary paradigm, need no longer be viewed as due to an influence of ‘mind’ on ‘body’: a definition of pathology as linked to a disconnection between different systems, as found in Bucci’s theory, is proposed as a possible solution. Emergence of somatic symptoms, however, besides being witness to disconnection, may be seen as the subsymbolic first expression of an item of content, an attempt at reconnection, as already proposed, in a way, by Winnicott in 1949. This attempt has much better opportunities to succeed when it finds an adequate container, as in analysis. A clinical situation of this kind is presented.