Pain and the Skin-ego

Researcher: Elspeth Strike
Supervised by: Christian Smith
Home department: English
Expected start date: 29/06/2015
Expected end date: 31/08/2015

I am a second year English Literature student with an interest in the ways in which different disciplines can be combined to provide new perspectives when researching. I have chosen to expand the boundaries my chosen degree subject to focus on psychology in my project in order to use and develop my own analytical skills by examining the narratives of interviewees rather than written texts. I hope to gain and advance valuable transferable skills and independence by undertaking my URSS project.

I aim to explore physical pain as skin stimulation with regards to different attitudes to modern primitives, tattoos and piercings. Anzieu's theory of the 'Skin-ego' will serve as a fundamental base for linking physical pain - stimulating or breaking the surface of the skin - with the development of our rational ego. The skin is the body's physical envelope; Anzieu sees the 'Skin-ego' as a psychical envelope, containing and defining the self. Building on his theory, I intend to locate and advance a mechanism for the effect of pain on our ego. Using raw material gained from interviews, in conjunction with this mechanism, I will investigate whether pain can be said to influence our ego in the same way as pleasure and whether physical pain is a component of the construction of the self.This project will advance and examine the Laplanchian critique of psychoanalytic theory; my exploration of the limits of the anaclitic libido and whether pain can create it in addition to pleasure, will ultimately contribute to an understanding of personality development and structure in terms of Freud's 'Second Topography': the id, the ego and the superego.

I will explore the participants' reasons behind their tattoos or piercings; whether they are interested in the aesthetics of modern primitives or the process (and/or pain) of acquiring them. Some initial questions I wish to investigate, I will tailor my interview questions around them and the people I am interviewing after preliminary research, are:

Do modern primitives contribute to the person's sense of identity? Are they simply an aesthetic addition to the body? Did they find the process of piercing or tattooing the skin painful or pleasurable? Did their attitude or prior experience to pain affect their decision to get a tattoo or piercing?