IN THE CORRIDORS OF SOMATIZATION - PLEASU RE AND ENTROPY

A chronic lack of pleasure, which can be accompanied by displeasure, h eralds the breakdown of a psychic economy. What is the functional mean ing of displeasure? Entropy - a quantity which can be calculated but n ot measured - is produced by irreversible processes both in thermodyna mic and physiological and psychic organisms. Is a favourable change in the evaluation of entropy at the source of what the subject lives as pleasure? The author's first concern is to demonstrate the anaclisis o f the drives Eros-Thanatos according to the second principle of thermo dynamics. To this end he's obliged to reformulate the concepts of life and death drive; then entropy and pleasure are compared. Given the ec onomic role of pleasure the conclusion is that during the transmutatio n of pathological processes from the psychic to the somatic what is tr ansmitted is precisely the flux of entropy. The lack of an adequate me ans of evacuation of the entropy surplus is thus at the origin of ''ps ychosomatic'' disorders. Along the same lines, the psychic economy of the psychotic close to decompensation fails to evacuate the surplus en tropy which pours into the soma.