You Are Your Body: Considerations on the Relation between Self and Body

The essay examines Alexander Lowen’s basic assumption that «you are your body”. Many aspects of our culture, however, contradict this statement, identifying the ego with the linguistic-mental processes of the brain. According to the author, the phenomenological perspective, focusing on subjective experience, allows us to conceive the person as a «living organism”, a perspective that therefore supports Lowen’s original assumption. A brief clinical case illustrates this thesis.