Abstract
This paper interrogates the practice of tattooing using a number of psychoanalytic concepts to
determine some of the reasons why a subject may choose to become ‘tattooed’, and what
some of the psychical consequences of this act are. In chapter one the history, roles and
origins of tattooing will be discussed, in relation to Freud’s work on Group Psychology
(1921) and Totem and Taboo (1913), to show how the tattoo was used by many cultures as ‘a
mark’, something that provided a visual demonstration of the subject’s relationship with the
tribe or their ‘totem clan’, their personal history, and their allegiance to ‘the leader’. As
tattooing is a practice that takes place on the body, ‘the body’ as it is conceived of by
psychoanalysis, and particularly by Freud (1905), will be discussed in the second chapter, to
draw out the psychosexual nature of the practice and the fact that subject’s experience a sort
of ‘satisfaction’ by being tattooed. Another aspect of this practice which the first two chapters
touch upon, is that of the gaze and the meaning of the tattoo in relation to the Other, the social
bond, so in chapter three the relation of the tattoo to the ‘the look’ and ‘the gaze’ as theorised
by Lacan (1963) will be discussed using particular examples. Finally, as the tattoo is an act
that takes place upon the body which, as is noted in the previous three chapters, attempts to
achieve a psychical satisfaction using the real of the body, this paper will discuss whether the
act of being tattooed is an acting out (agieren) or a passage a l’acte, with particular reference
to Lacan’s (1963; 1971) analysis of Freud’s paper of the young homosexual woman (1920). Author keywords: Tattooing, Freud, Lacan, body skin culture, gaze
