La función del registro imaginario en la construcción del cuerpo desde lo estético en jóvenes adultos.

Abstract

Grounded in Lacan’s later teaching, this study examines how young adults constitute their body at the intersection of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real amid the decline of the Other and the proliferation of images. It analyzes the function of the Imaginary in bodily consistency, the modalities of jouissance mobilized in aesthetic practices, and the effects of the Other’s gaze. A literature review was combined with a focus group, and the material was interpretively analyzed from a Lacanian perspective. Findings indicate: (a) an oscillation between bodily invisibility and hypervisibility governed by the gaze; (b) the ambivalence of bodily ideals as both inspiration and superegoic injunction; (c) body modification operating either as a sinthome that knots and modulates jouissance, or as an imperative of infinite accountability; and (d) gendered differences—double standards and heightened risk of sexualization for women, and the moralization of pain and endurance for men. We conclude that aesthetic practices function as technologies of the self through which the parlêtre brings a body into being. Clinically, the aim is not to dismantle semblants but to put them to work treating ideals as a repertoire, reinscribing symbolic boundaries in exposure, and cultivating a savoir-faire with jouissance.