The wound of the border: the liminality condition of the body and psyche

Abstract

The process of meaning-making of personal experience is realized through the development of borders. They represent dynamic semiotic devices that allow us simultaneous processes of distinction and connection, separation and integration, individuation and belonging. In a semiotic and psychodynamic perspective, the skin is the first and fundamental boundary process that makes possible the development of identity, the intersubjective dimension and sharing within life contexts. The illness appears as a life discontinuity constituting a laceration of personal somatic, psychic, social borders. From this wound, the victim of an illness may find his/herself in a state of liminality. This concept, originally anthropological, is of current interest in the psychological context as the main feature is the feeling of disorientation, isolation, fragmentation, exclusion from the world of others. In clinical terms, the elaboration of the liminal experience can occur through the construction of new border systems that can construct new meaning to the many aspects of life.