Mucocutaneous Leishmaniasis

Mucocutaneous leishmaniasis attacks where you are most vulnerable — where your inside meets the world. The mucous membranes of the nose, mouth and throat, the fine boundary between you and the outside, are attacked, eaten away, dissolved. What normally protects and demarcates becomes permeable. The medical explanation — a parasitic infection transmitted by sandflies — is clear and important. But the psychosomatic perspective asks a deeper question: what inside you has become so permeable that even your innermost boundaries are dissolving?

Because what the body is showing here is no ordinary infection. It is an image of dissolution. Of a self that is losing its contours. Of a person who is evaporating — not in a figurative sense, but quite concretely: the substance that protects and holds you together is being worn away from within.