Les sensations de faim ou de soif, de chaud ou de froid, la fatigue ou les douleurs bénignes, objectivent banalement l’équilibre invisible entre être un corps et avoir un corps au privilège de ce dernier, ce qui est plus net encore lors de douleurs durables et de maladies graves. Je suis d’autant plus mon corps que je dispose du pouvoir d’être, d’agir et de paraître comme je le veux. Mais cette distance au corps-objet est aussi possibilité d’aliénation de moi à moi. De plus, visible par autrui, mon corps ne peut se soustraire à son regard, mais il saura lui signifier malaise et souffrance. Arthur Tatossian a montré comment et en quoi dans une passion de l’avoir, la conduite hypocondriaque vit le corps objet comme un type très particulier de possession, celle de l’objet de collection. Le corps réalise alors le paradoxe de ne pas avoir valeur d’usage – plus il est précieux, moins il doit être touché, donc utilisable – mais valeur d’échange. Le corps ici n’est pas un outil mais un signifiant : il importe qu’il soit visible et vu car il représente l’invisible, comme les objets historiques évoquent le passé, les objets exotiques, le lointain, les portraits, l’absent ou le disparu, les reliques, le sacré. D’où la confusion entre le médecin et le patient : le médecin identifie le corps du patient comme un instrument à réparer alors que celui-ci lui demande de confirmer l’invisible et pour ce faire présente son corps comme signe de tout ce qu’il déplore dans le présent et dans le passé : la carence ou les imperfections de son corps et de son être, de ses proches, de ses relations affectives et de son enfance. D’où la nécessité pour le thérapeute de ne pas confondre les buts et les moyens.

Versée dans les discussions conceptuelles, causales et plus récemment critériologiques, la psychiatrie séjourne dans des modèles psychopathologiques toujours plus élaborés mais aussi trop éloignés des « choses elles-mêmes » de la clinique quotidienne à commencer parce qu’elle y rencontre, un patient/une patiente « en chair et en os » et son corps qui pour être souffrant parle à sa manière et pour certains jusqu’à être contraint au soin, voire au séjour hospitalier. Or le corps, objet et sujet, est leur équilibre maintenu face aux vicissitudes de l’existence. Il est objet, forme de l’avoir comme instrument, et il peut être douloureux, épuisé, exalté… et par là modifié et secouru techniquement. Mais il est aussi sujet, forme d’existence, corps vivant qui est « chair » et multiple, corps pluriel qui assume les changements d’une position d’existence à l’autre jusqu’à l’impossible, l’impuissance ou l’échec. La proportion est fragile entre corps porteur de l’expérience et corps en apparition dans ses significations comme en attestent ses aléas déclinant les grandes dimensions de la pathologie en psychiatrie, où du royaume des idées nous devons toujours savoir revenir à ce qui les permet. À des fins d’ajustements thérapeutiques, nous proposons une approche méthodologique du corps vécu comme chair et réversibilité dans la perspective de Maurice Merleau Ponty [1] (Dr F. Jover Bureau de la SPCDN, CHU de Nice), du vécu de collection du corps hypocondriaque d’après Arthur Tatossian [2] (Dr B. Giordana) et des dysharmonies entre corps-idem et corpsipse dans les cyclothymies et les schizophrénies d’après les travaux de Paul Ricoeur [3] (Pr D. Pringuey, Président de la SPCDN ou Dr C. Rometti membre de la SPCDN).

In Anglo-Saxon and Viking literature swords form part of a hero's identity. In addition to being weapons, they represent a material agent for the individual's actions, a physical expression of identity. In this article we bring together the evidence from literature and archaeology concerning Anglo-Saxon and Viking-age swords and argue that these strands of evidence converge on the construction of mortuary identities and particular personhoods. The placement of the sword in funerary contexts is important. Swords were not just objects; they were worn close to the body, intermingling with the physical person. This is reflected in the mortuary context where they were displayed within an emotive aesthetic. Typically, swords were embraced, placed next to the head and shoulders, more like a companion than an object. However, there are exceptions: graves like Birka 581 and Prittlewell show sword locations that contrast with the normal placement, locations which would have jarred with an observer's experience, suggesting unconventional or nuanced identities. By drawing on literary evidence, we aim to use the words of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings to illuminate the significance of swords in mortuary contexts and their wider cultural associations.

Much research has been carried out on identifying gendered iconography on statue-menhirs. This paper seeks to develop this perspective by considering the broader body concepts. Body concepts are of interest to archaeologists because they are closely connected to issues of sex, gender, and age. By investigating stone sculptures, however, we are looking at an ideological view of the body that was produced by reducing the stone from its natural form into a statue-menhir. The presence of bodily features on the statue-menhirs suggests that it was important to construct a body, and that certain aspects of the body were chosen to be represented, either through the size and shape of the stone or iconography, while others were neglected. We propose this is a significant means by which stones were made into bodies and gendered beings. To investigate body concepts, we pose two questions: how was a statue-menhir body made, and how was it gendered? By following the reduction sequence of the stone as the technique of production, we investigate which bodily features were important in constructing a body and in gendering it. We do this through analysing and comparing three regional examples of anthropomorphic statue-menhirs: (1) The Lunigiana groups A and B in northwestern Tuscany and eastern-most Liguria, (2) the Atesino group in Trentino-Alto Adige, and (3) the Sion Type A in the Swiss Valais and the Aosta Style I in northern Italy. Although there is a shared statue-menhir tradition in the three regions and beyond, the observations in this paper suggest that the bodily gender categories were negotiated regionally.

Neolithic bodies are not only manifestations of subjective principles. Social and symbolic norms are also incorporated within the bodies of both actual and represented individuals. These norms often relate to economic and religious notions of society, as well as to effigies. Owing to high population densities in Neolithic villages, only a select group of the inhabitants were buried within settlements or represented in images. This generated a category of privileged individuals and body features, which were related to symbolic principles rather than social hierarchy. Such practices among Neolithic societies in the Balkans are evident within burials and human representations. Individuals buried inside settlements, anthropomorphic house models, and figurines from several sites in Ovče Pole, Pelagonia, and the Skopje Valley are used as case studies in this paper. Placing these sites into a wider geographical context, it is argued that gender, age and body parts were significant criteria in funerary practices and features of corporeality.

The role of the human body in the creation of social knowledge—as an ontological and/or aesthetic category—has been applied across social theory. In all these approaches, the body is viewed as a locus for experience and knowledge. If the body is a source of subjective knowledge, then it can also become an important means of creating ontological categories of self and society. The materiality of human representations within art traditions, then, can be interpreted as providing a means for contextualizing and aestheticizing the body in order to produce a symbolic and structural knowledge category. This paper explores the effect of material choices and techniques of production when representing the human body on how societies order and categorize the world.

This article discusses qualitative research conducted in minority Francophone communites in Ontario. The perceptions of and participation in physical activity by some thirty women are analysed with respect to sociological foundations and current views on aging. These views apply to individual responsibility for health; to the links between health, beauty, and aging; to participation in sports; to perceptions of masculinity and femininity; and, finally, to the obligation to remain physically active at all stages of life. The results of the study among women grouped into three age brackets reveal that, although these women have adopted a view of individual responsibility for health and the prevention of the harmful effects of aging through regular physical exercise, they may also be seen as subjects who find strategies in their daily lives to avoid falling prey to the pressures of health and beauty standards regarding aging, to face limitations, and to develop a healthy way of experiencing the aging process.

Middle Bronze Age Hungary provides an opportunity to investigate prehistoric ‘landscapes of the body’, as perceptions and attitudes to the body affect burial practices and other body practices, including the wearing of dress and the use of pottery. This article explores the cultural diversity expressed by the roughly contemporary and neighbouring groups of the Encrusted Ware, Vatya, and Füzesabony Cultures. Amongst others, differences between the three groups are articulated through their burials (scattered cremations, urn burials as well as crouched inhumations) and the diverse use of material culture. At the same time, despite formal differences in the burials, the analysis shows that cremations and inhumations in this area share a number of characteristics, and it is the other practices through which the dead body is manipulated that are the primary means of expressing regional differences. Simultaneously, whilst being a means of formulating understandings of the deceased body, burial practices are also tied into subtle differences in lifestyles, daily routines and regional subsistence strategies, as the landscapes of the living provide metaphors, know-how and practical understanding.