Le moi-peau

Abstract

Pour se construire une identité cohérente, l’homme s’est toujours attaché à distinguer ce qui appartenait au monde perceptif, ce qui lui appartenait en propre et ce qui appartenait au monde intérieur d’autrui. Les psychanalystes ont particulièrement étudié les structures psychiques fantasmatiques délimitant le monde intérieur individuel : leur constitution, leurs caractéristiques, leur devenir, leurs perturbations et leurs défaillances. Dans le même mouvement, à la suite des éthologues, ils ont pointé l’importance du rôle de la mère et des échanges précoces mère-enfant (tactiles, en particulier) pour que l’enfant devienne un individu autonome se sentant en sécurité dans ses limites corporelles et psychiques. S’est ainsi développé le lien métaphorique entre la peau réelle, celle étudiée par les anatomistes et les dermatologues, qui limite le corps et se situe à la frontière du monde extérieur et du monde intérieur de l’individu, et une structure psychique fantasmatique qui joue le rôle de limite, de frontière entre le monde intérieur, psychique, de l’individu et le monde extérieur. C’est dans une telle dynamique d’élaboration théorique psychanalytique que Didier Anzieu, psychanalyste français, a élaboré le concept du Moi-peau. Il a ainsi favorisé des collaborations théoriques et pratiques fructueuses entre les psychanalystes et les dermatologues.

To construct a coherent identity, humans must distinguish what belongs to the external, perceived world from what belongs to their own inner world and the inner world of other individuals. Based on the theory developed by S. Freud and on work by ethologists, a number of psychoanalysts (J. Bowlby, R.A. Spitz, D.W. Winnicott, etc.) have underlined the importance of early tactile exchanges with the mother if a child is to become an autonomous individual who feels secure within what he or she perceives to be sound and reliable mental and physical boundaries. More recently, other psychoanalysts (E. Bick, W.R. Bion, etc.) have studied the fantasized mental structures that form the limits between an individual’s inner mental space and the external world (including other individuals). As part of this theoretical psychoanalytical movement, Didier Anzieu, a French psychoanalyst, started to develop the concept of the « Moi-peau » in 1974. The « Moi-peau » designates a fantasized reality that a child uses during its early development to represent itself as « me », based on its experience of the body surface. The child, enveloped in its mother’s care, fantasizes of a skin shared with its mother: on one side the mother (the outer layer of the « Moipeau »), and on the other side the child (the inner layer of the « Moipeau »). These two layers must separate gradually if the child is to acquire its own me-skin. D. Anzieu’s work allowed dermatologists and other specialists, such as pediatricians, to focus on the quality of early tactile exchanges between a mother and her child, including the child with a chronic skin disorder. It also helped dermatologists to recognize patients with « borderline » states, which are particularly frequent in dermatology (ereutophobia, dysmorphophobia, tattooing, self-mutilation, artefacta dermatitis). These borderline patients are adults who, as a result of their mental conflicts, adopt defense mechanisms derived from both neurotic and psychotic functioning. Their complaints reflect difficulties with the solidity of their mental and physical limits: their real skin is metaphorically linked to the fantasized mental structure that delimits the individual mental space. Among other clinical characteristics, they have a « pathology of action » and frequently attack their own skin, paradoxically, in order to test the solidity and reliability of their own limits. Finally, D. Anzieu’s work encouraged dermatologists to use psychotherapeutic approaches in parallel to classical dermatologic approaches, when necessary, and helped them better understand how psychoanalysts work with patients who have not yet acquired their own « Moi-peau ». As a result, D. Anzieu was among the first to reconcile dermatologists and psychoanalysts.