In Civilization And Its Discontents, Freud draws an analogy beteen the "Eternal City" Rome and the "sphere of the mind." He uses the analogy to illuminate his idea that in the development of the civilized person nothing is ever eliminated, but rather everything is present as in the archaeological layers of the site of the Eternal City. The primitive is not missing from the site of the civilized person, only buried beneath the surface of the present.

The development of the person leads to the death of the person. The logic of development is the logic of death in life. At each stage of development someone is buried. When the surface of the present vanishes the whole person is buried, the process of development ceases. The whole picture is only visible an instant before it vanishes. The person is a magician of disappearance.

There is an idea that this process of development is life itself, that there is no life without death in it. The idea is that the structure of the living body is spherical, the living body is a sphere, a synergetic structure with an "inside" and an "outside." I am an expanding bubble man, destined to pop. But there is, Oh Monks, another idea.

There is a body which lives on the surface of the spherical body, much like fleas on the dog. The superfical body has no knowledge of the sphere, no knowledge of a relationship between "inside" and "outside." This other body, or, the body of the "other," covers the surface of the sphere like a woven blanket, a living blanket. The network of relationships that compose this living blanket are all horizontal; there is no vertical dimension. I am thinking that Deleuze and Guattari are explorers of this superfical body.