The body politic:
heir to the human body

Richard Koenigsberg

1. Perception of political units grows out of the experience and perception of one’s own body. The body is externalized into political units. Fantasies about the body are projected into the nation. The body politic is a double of the self, symbolizing the self.
2. Nations are experienced as if fused with the body, which is why we get so excited about them. We defend nations desperately because they are experienced as extensions of our bodies.
3. Metaphorical language conveys the bodily meaning of abstract ideas (which, however, we don’t experience as abstract ideas, rather as concrete realities).
4. Metaphorical language in political rhetoric contains and reveals bodily fantasies. Metaphors originate in the body and fantasies about the body. Metaphors convey bodily experience.
5. Modell: “Primary metaphors are derived from bodily sensations and projected outward.”  Bodily experiences and fantasies are projected into politics units.
6. The "body politic" is a symbol of the self, HEIR TO THE ACTUAL HUMAN BODY.
7. Countries are symbols or mental representations, not real entities. As mental representations, they are not separate from, but are tied to bodily processes.
8. Analysis of metaphors in political texts is the methodology for perceiving how unconscious phantasies (about the body) are externalized into political and cultural symbols. 
9. Analysis of metaphorical language reveals bodily symbolism. To study bodily metaphors (in political texts or rhetoric) is to understand the "transformational equation" (Howard F. Stein) whereby fantasies about the body are transformed into symbolic systems.