The social body is a nuclear body; all the action is a nuclear reaction. The people establish a common identity by incorporating a common ancestor; the identity of each is established in the totem feast. The nucleus of the corporate body is a part bitten off and retained inside the body. The super-ego is the nucleus of the ego body. The social body is the ego body. To live in the absence of society is to live in the absence of the ego-structure, to live unconsciously.

There is, O Monks, an unconscious body from which the conscious body arises like an island from the sea. The awakened conscious body is a social body, which is to say a body that manifests a polar difference, a difference between "inside" and "outside." The asocial, non-nuclear, unconscious body does not manifest this difference. The unconscious body is a body without the organs of reproduction. Genital organization is social organization. The asocial and unconscious body is "polymorphously perverse," a sexual experience that is whole rather than partial.