Before the mind could distinguish between skin and air, before perception made its arrangements with the hard, flat edges of the earth, the body was there, invading space, waging nonstop war across a continuous front of stimuli. Upon its first distinction between external pressures that can be moved away from or removed, and internal pressures which are constant, the organism then set out on an adventure to change the external world while undertaking involved and interconnected activities to reduce the stimulation of the instincts. In this ensuing rich mental life, somewhere between the polarities of subject/object, pleasure/pain, activity/passivity, the sovereignty of the body was excluded. It became a mirror, a signboard, a device, a site of production, a trained pet.
