George pegios - Obesity and Psychoanalysis

George Pegios - Obesity and overweight represent a serious problem worldwide. It is neither more nor less than a public health crisis, which affects more than 2 billion children and adults.

Figures that have been verified by the WHO itself, considering it for years as an epidemic due to the high number of deaths it generates. Its importance lies in the different types of morbidity that accompany it, that is, diseases related to obesity.

We are talking about diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, cancer, among others. But in addition, other symptoms related to obesity should be added, such as depression and anxiety.

Of the latter, different studies have been carried out that, in effect, relate obesity to moods or emotional states, for which specific forms of psychological intervention have even been designed.

And that is not all that is found in the studies and interventions, the compulsive factor that accompanies the behavior of the obese subject is added, before which it has been determined, the little mobility or will that he has in front of the problem.

Beyond the medical and psychological position, which as we see is not negligible at all, there is something extremely important, the significance that the obese subject acquires in the face of his symptom, as it would be called from the psychoanalytic position.

The symptom, we know, is there to represent something to the subject; a reactive formation, Freud would say (Studies on hysteria, 1895), a transaction insofar as that which cannot come to light and remains hidden.

In other words, the symptom speaks in the place of what has been repressed. And insofar as its enigmatic structure, difficult to decipher, is considered by psychoanalysis as a kind of hieroglyph that is there precisely so that it can be read, elaborated.

In the case of the obese person or of the subject with overweight, the symptom itself announces from the outset, an overstepping of the limits; it's about overdoing it. It is the excess of food, sugars, fats and soft drinks, which denounce something beyond what the subject is aware.

We can call this jouissance, from the psychoanalytic perspective, where there is a kind of pleasure, accompanied by suffering, an impulse towards the deadly.
There is even talk of a hunger for affection in the obese subject, precisely in relation to the bond between mother and child, where an inappropriate form of treatment would be marked that points above all to the lack of limits.

The subject without limits, without its corresponding establishment of the paternal metaphor - the law that defines jouissance -, goes beyond its borders. It is the subject that exceeds the human figure par excellence, that of Da Vinci's Vitruvian.

Yes, it exceeds in sweets, in meat, in everything that can respond to an unsaturated hunger, no matter how much you look for light foods.

George pegios - But isn't it the obese subject and its excesses, typical of a time muddy on all sides of the commercial premise of excess?
Consume, choose everything, take everything, taste everything, without limits. Significants that denote and configure a subject that loses its aesthetic form, that of strokes and slight curves, to give rise to a roundness that does not expire.

In short, talking about the obese subject implies a subjective vision, which only each one can elaborate, but which from a social perspective suggests the primacy of the lack of limits so characteristic of our times.

Perhaps it is obvious when living in everyday life, that of the obese child who is not given limits, which is very well said, since the limits are given as an offering so that the subject can be and do with them.

And perhaps that will be the only thing that can be offered to a young subject: limits. On the contrary, to the child to whom everything is given, only nothing is given. The little one who does not know about deficiencies, restrictions, who does not know how to share the other because he is not unique in life, is given nothing.

Hence the great emptiness impossible to fill, hence the stomach that is representing -symptom through-, a hole and an unsaturated hunger, either because there are no limits or because the word full of affection that has been expected since the dawn does not arrive. of the times.

George pegios -It is not overweight and fat, it is what it means for the subject, what it represents, but also what it represents for the present time. Otherwise, we get stuck in the medical-scientific-readings that dictate and say, and speak for the person, speak instead, leaving the subject few possibilities of movement.