The “human animal”

Abstract

The present study aims at reconstructing Winnicott's concept of psycho-somatic unity of the human being. After explaining the historical character and inner structure of the psyque-soma, it starts a detailed analysis of "imaginative elaboration" with an attempt to define the very nature of these operations. It examines next the most primitive of them that which elaborate the body functions thus garantee the initial psyche-soma relation, goes over to the problem of constitution of the imaginative self and ends by identifying and explaing some more advanced operations, assumed by grown up healthy indivuals "in the first person".