Keywords
Abstract
This essay begins from the observation of the difficulty of modelling the phenomenon of hunger in its entirety, a difficulty consisting in the impossibility of passing seamlessly from the somatic to the psychic aspect and vice versa. The reason for this difficulty is found in the fact that it involves some important epistemological problems such as the relationship between reduction and naturalization, the relationship between objectivity and ontology, the relationship between different objectivities and the constitution of the objectivities themselves. It is therefore considered that the Freudian metapsychological model - whose basic epistemological lines are revealed - is crucial in achieving a suture between the somatic and the psychic. With specific regard to the phenomenon of hunger, it is shown how a restoration of the Freudian notion of «self-preservation drives» is decisive for its satisfactory modelling from both a theoretical and clinical point of view.