Making breasts, making meaning: Psychoanalytic metaphors and the real (Kentridge, 2019)

Kentridge Alice. 

Psychodynamic Practice: Individuals, Groups and Organisations 2019;25(3): 284. 

Available online at this link 

This article considers the ways in which metaphors of bodies (and breasts in particular) open up thought, while also trying to grapple with the aggression these metaphors enact, and the impact they might have in the consulting room. The author is thinking about the ways in which bodies, often bodies that are felt to be ‘other’, are treated in relation to these metaphoric parts. In particular, the author is considering a series of conversations about transgender bodies and transitions that he has been witnessing in psychodynamic or psychoanalytic contexts. In these conversations questions about what people should or should not be doing to their bodies can become charged. There is a desire to know something about the ‘real’ body, what people actually have underneath their clothes and what they are planning to do to it. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)