Abstract

This paper aims to outline some of the ways Freud conceives the relationship between body, mind and language, in order to stress how the topic of the body is actually an essential part of the author’s philosophy. To carry out this analysis, I will begin from the earliest Freud, who sheds light, through hysteria, on the symbolic body, to end with the maturity works, where the body becomes a body in excess. The concepts of conversion, on one hand, and drive, on the other, will be crucial for this analysis. Throughout this paper, I will try to show how Freud recognized an essential unity between body and mind, that is how, in clinical practice, is actually possible to fill that gap, which Freud regards as mysterious, between the biological and the mental