Under the Skin (The New Library of Psychoanalysis 'Beyond the Couch' Series)

I'm a science writer whose current project is a book about people who self-induce visions. Many induction methods involve the use of some ascetic practice--isolation, fasting, sleep loss, extreme exertion, and, not least, self-infliction of pain. Often the public display of self-mortification plays an important role. In addition to these professional concerns, I'm puzzled by the current popularity of tattoos among young people in my area. Given these interests, I began searching for a scholarly book on the subject, preferably a recent one, and I soon came across Alexandra Lemma's UNDER THE SKIN. I am deeply appreciative of her ability to illuminate a world that would otherwise seem inaccessible to me. I would give this book the highest recommendation, but a prospective buyer should be aware that this is a serious, scholarly work by a psychotherapist, not a pop psych text.

This is a thoughtful and careful look at the (unconscious) motivations behind body modification. I found the discussion lucid and persuasive. Although ostensibly the book is about the compulsion to pierce and tattoo, it's really about our contemporary relationship to our bodies, and the way in which postmodernity (or modernity, given your bent) has transformed the mind/body problem anew. Although the book does not delve into more sociological speculations, Lemma has a lot to teach us about a larger cultural shift from neurosis as the "paradigm" to psychosis---but without judgement. This is a savvy, smart, and I daresay loving book from an analyst generally concerned with how subjectivity is transforming in our time. The book assumes a background in psychoanalysis; readers unfamiliar with this domain of theory may have a tough time. But, from the perspective of someone who teaches psychoanalytic material often, I find this a smart, interesting, and highly relevant to our time. I'll be teaching this book in a graduate seminar on psychoanalysis in a few months. Highly recommended for the academic interested in body modification and psychoanalysis.

I found this book to be very wordy. This lady loves to hear herself talk and has to use as many big words as possible in order to make sure that the reader feels like she must be smart so she must know what she's talking about.It seems to me that this book is less about how "heavily modified" people got to be the way they are and more about what the author seems to think is "wrong" with these people.I was dissappointed and would ask for a refund if it were possible.

Very readable and important topic.

The book would benefit from broader thinking on sexuality. Psychoanalytic thinking needs to move on from heteronormative accounts of the relationhips between mother/father-child and the "desires" inherent in those dyads/triads. On Chapter 1 - As you desire me - page 33, the author writes:"Importantly, at the intersection of the first stirrings of desire, the little boy and little girl have an asymmetrical experience in relation to the mother. The little boy is, at birth, exposed to the opposite sex. In this sense desire may flow more easily in the dyad... By contrast the little girl, who is not an Oedipal object for the mother, may feel that she simply cannot get enough positive investment in her bodily self, that she cannot elicit the mother's desire enough, if at all, to shore up her quota of desirability. Instead she has to wait for her turn when, and if, her relationship with her father is more accesible to her." (Lemma, 2010)Sadly, this view is imbued with the heteronormative assumption that the mother, father and child are heterosexual. Even if the constituent elements of a dyad/triad are more polarised towards a heterosexual position within a continuum of sexuality, sexuality is not a fixed state of being and "desire" does not circumscribe itself to the subject/object's gendered/sexual roles. A study on mothers/fathers' desires/fantasies/intrusions towards their children would hopefully illuminate us further.

Ill informed and biased. Poorly written and poorly conceived. Avoid!