The Skin Ego and Body Boundaries: A Psychoanalysis of the Skin in Helen Mort’s The Illustrated Woman

Abstract

This research examines the psychological landscape of Helen Mort's 2022 poetry collection The Illustrated Woman through the unique lens of Applied Psychoanalysis. Centred on Didier Anzieu's "The Skin Ego," this research explores how the skin (as opposed to merely a biological barrier) serves as an important site for ego development and protection. Through repeated references to tattooing, scarring, and inscriptions of the body, this research posits that Mort's lyrical speakers use their skin as a "Psychic Shield" to protect their fragmented internal selves from disintegration by external forces. The research focuses on how deliberate, physical pain and permanent ink allow for a working-through process of intergenerational trauma as well as a psychic weaning from the maternal body. Overall, this research demonstrates that in Mort's poetry, the illustrated body is in fact the very fabric of the ego itself-a resilient, living script that has been carefully constructed with the intention of maintaining psychological wholeness