Frankenskin: When the functions of the ‘psychic skin’ go wrong | January 30, 2016

Frankenskin: When the functions of the ‘psychic skin’ go wrong.
Karin Holland Biggs

Scientific Meeting | Saturday, January 30, 2016 | Venue: Arbutus Club 2001 Nanton Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 4A1

Join us Saturday, January 30, 2016 for a screening of Almodovar’s film The Skin I Live In. Karin Holland Biggs will explore how use of the body of the other is integral to the horror genre and to the unrepresentable psychic pain of unmourned loss in this psychological thriller. Skin as canvas, as container, psychic skin, and second skin formation will be discussed.

In a culture where surfaces matter, skin, the largest organ, is the “scrim” on which we project our greatest fantasies and deepest fears about our bodies (Mifflin 1997 in Lemma Minding the Body 2015). Pedro Almodóvar’s film, The Skin I Live In, a Spanish psychological thriller (2011), reminds us that the body and the skin, as boundary and canvas, are also the traditional territory of the horror genre and its tropes which inspire dread, revulsion, and disgust. In Almodóvar’s film, the eminent surgeon Dr. Ledgard, his seared “psychic skin” (Bick, 1968) overwhelmed by external reality and unmourned losses, invents an indestructible “second” skin for his special patient. We are caught up in a visually sensuous, dreamlike narrative of loss, compulsion, and possession. By drawing on the work of Alexandra Lemma, we will discover the psychological basis of the tropes of horror in Almodóvar’s film, and the relationship between psychic collapse and second skin formation which drives Dr. Ledgard’s research. Lemma proposes that practices of body modification, even those which are socially accepted, may reinforce internal dynamics and sanction perverse solutions to traumatic events that cannot be represented in the mind. An alternative story in the film about the sources of identity that are more than skin deep will also be explored. The film will be screened from 9:35-11:35, with discussion to follow.

Learning Objectives of “Frankenskin: When the functions of the ‘psychic skin’ go wrong.”
1. Describe the developmental substrate out of which the functions of the healthy psychic skin develop as compared to second skin formations.
2. Discuss how difficulties in accepting loss, separateness, and dependence may relate to a compelling need to modify the body.
3. Identify the unconscious representations leading to hatred of a body or body part.

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Karin Holland Biggs, a member of the Western Branch-CPS since 2007, maintains a private psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapy practice in Yaletown and Richmond, BC where she works with young adults and adults in individual and couple treatment. Her special interests are ways of thinking about interiority and society that develop out of a commitment to looking inward and outward simultaneously and to examining the interface between in order to understand the grounds of personal and social transformation. Doctoral studies at McGill University in the interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Communications were followed by psychoanalytic training at the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis, Quebec English branch in Montreal. A two year clinical internship on the Youth Service at the Institute for Community and Family Psychiatry at the Jewish General Hospital was part of that training. She is also a registered Clinical Counsellor in BC.

The 2016 Scientific Program Committee: Judith Setton-Markus (Chair), M.Ed., R. Psych, Karin Holland Biggs, PhD., RCC, James Fabian, MD, FRCPC, Endre Koritar, MD, FRCPC, Catherine Young, PhD, R. Psych.