I. ST. PAUL AND THE BODY OF THE CHURCH   

The essence of St. Paul's idea appears in Romans 12: "Just as in one body we have many members, yet all the members have the same function. We, the many, are one body in Christ, (and also) severally members one of another."

Similarly, Corinthians 12: "For the body is not one member, but many.  If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? 

“If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. Similarly, in Corinthians 12: "For the body is not one member, but many.  If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

“And if they were all one member, where were the body?  But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Now ye are the body of Christ, member for member."

    The central idea expressed by St. Paul is that of many bodies (or body parts) coming together, fusing to form a single, omnipotent body. The body of the church consists of a multitude of  "members" uniting to form a single, organic entity. When today we say that someone is a "member" of a group, we imply that the individual is a "bodily part" (“member”) that together with other “members” constitutes the (body of) the group.
 

II. HOBBES LEVIATHAN

     Hobbes' classic work on political theory, THE LEVIATHAN (April 1651) articulates a similar idea.  In the wonderful picture on the front piece (which may be seen HERE), the King—-symbolizing the state or commonwealth—is depicted as consisting of MANY HUMAN BODIES BOUND TOGETHER TO CONSTITUTE THE KING’S BODY.

    The picture, grotesque, provides a physical sense of the meaning of the term "body politic." Many bodies are bound within the King's body to constitute one gigantic body (a "leviathan"). As in St. Paul image, what is expressed is the idea that MANY HUMAN BODIES HAVE FUSED TO CREATE A SOCIETAL BODY (the body politic, body of the church, Christ’s body).
 

III. NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION.

    Rudolf Hess often said, "Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler." When one identifies with one's nation, one's own body is equated with or united to form an entire "body of territory." When the World Trade Towers collapsed, people throughout the nation experienced this event as a personal trauma, as if their own bodies had been torn apart; broken into pieces.

    The idea of national identification often is expressed as bodily metaphor. Sri Aurobindo called the nation a mighty association which "unites the people of East and North Bengal and defies partition, because it embraces every son of the land—brother and brother massed inseparably together."

According to Berndt Wegner, the SS "saw the individual as an integral element of a social organism.” The individual's personal value and justification for his very existence “depended solely on the advantages he furnished the national community.”  The individual was, in the eyes of the SS, “only a fragment of the body politic." Germans united to form one body; the national body; Hitler’s body.

In THE HITLER MOVEMENT, James Rhodes observes that National Socialism claimed that the Volk was "a kind of living creature with a mind (der Volksgeist), a will (der Volkswille), and a body (der Volkskorper).” The Nazis expected every member of the Volk to fill himself with the life of the communal organism “just as arms, legs and leaves are pervaded by the existence of the organisms to which they belong."
 

IV. PSYCHIC SOURCES OF THE METAPHOR

     In many cultures at different historical moments, the idea of society, state or nation is expressed as MANY HUMAN BODIES FUSED TO CONSTITUTE ONE GIGANTIC BODY. This metaphor derives from St. Paul’s imagery or metaphor, a body politic forming an (omnipotent) national body. We imagine that this body (politic) exists as an entity in the outer world, separate from our own body, yet bound to or connected to our own body.

     Margaret Mahler’s term "symbiosis" expresses this fantasy of "no boundary" between two subjects that actually are separate. This same term conveys the idea of many subjects or human beings united within a single boundary to constitute a body politic (a polity consisting of many bodies united into one body).

     At a certain moment, each human being actually is a small organism contained within a larger human body; a fetus in the body of a mother. Psychoanalysts such as Freud, Ferenczi and Rank emphasized a dynamic growing out of this situation positing a wish to "return to the womb." Aware of the symbolic dimensions of this wish, they insisted that it represented an actual, physical desire--the wish to be contained once again within the physical body of the mother.

V. THE WISH TO BE BOUND TO AN OMNIPOTENT BODY

     St. Paul was a human being as were Hobbes and Hitler and every one else who uses the term "body politic." The phrase is a socio-historical invention. The power of this metaphor and its perpetuation, however, stems from the fact that it expresses and is sustained by a fantasy, namely the wish that one's own (small) body be BOUND TO OR CONTAINED WITHIN A LARGER ONE (the body of a mother). A wish or fantasy is transformed into a cultural invention. The cultural form expresses or articulates the fantasy. The cultural invention is sustained and perpetuated because it articulates a psychological desire (an infantile wish).

     At the core of the civilizational project lies the tendency to transform concrete, bodily experiences into abstract ideas. Freud used the term "sublimation" to suggest how energies derived from the body are transformed, creating something new. Freud hypothesized that these symbolic transformations never lose their connection to the bodily source from which they are derived.
 

VI. NATIONALISM AS BODILY FANTASY

    The following passages or examples allow us to perceive how the idea of the nation—nationalism—grows out of this bodily fantasy. The metaphorical language reveals infantile fantasy as the source of the ideology.

    Michelet described the French nation as "a living person which the child touches and feels on every side. He cannot embrace her, but “she embraces him." The Indian nationalist Sri Aurobindo said, "There is one place in which you all meet” and that is “your common
Mother.” This is not merely a division of land but “is a living thing, the Mother in whom you move and have your being."

    Hitler (an Austrian) expressed his wish for the re-union of Austria (a separate nation) with Germany, addressing those who "detached from their mother country” now, with poignant emotion, “long for the hour which will permit them to return to the heart of their faithful mother."

     When the regressive fantasy of fusion with the mother connects to the abstract idea of the nation (a transference), the idea is energized and becomes meaningful. The fantasy constitutes the fuel sustaining attachment to the idea.
 

VII. THE DREAM OF THE BODY POLITIC

    The metaphor of the "body politic" reveals the deep structure of the idea of society, state or nation. This fantasy is that of MANY HUMAN BODIES BOUND TOGETHER TO CONSTITUTE A SINGLE, OMNIPOTENT BODY.

     Perhaps this fantasy of being bound to an omnipotent body lies at the essence of civilization (anthropologist Leslie White called culture the "superorganic"). The dream of the body politic sustains human creation and endeavor. We imagine there is a realm of being separate from human existence—to which each and every one of us is bound.

    The term "body politic" expresses the idea or fantasy that there is a body OTHER THAN OUR OWN; an omnipotent body with which our own bodies are fused. This body, we imagine (a double of the self), will "go on being" even as we die.