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In other words, in the absence of a securely introjected containing object the infant develops substitute methods of holding itself together. According to Bick, these substitute methods can be understood as ‘second skin’ formations – formations ‘through which dependence on the [containing] object is replaced by a pseudo-independence, by the inappropriate use of certain mental functions, or perhaps innate talents, for the purpose of creating a substitute for this skin container function’ (1987: 115). In early infancy, second skin formations can include persistent skin scratching or rubbing; compulsive babbling; precocious talking; continual tapping, twitching and shaking; highly rigid and muscular body postures; and excessive attachments to particular tactile objects as well as to specific sights, smells and sounds. The second skin, then, can be seen as a sort of muscular or intellectual carapace – one that offers containment while it denies the need for an external object, and one that protects while it ‘conceals a fragile inner core and the faulty development of the internalized “primal skin” of the mother, with all its physical and psychical properties’ (Jackson and Nowers, 2002: 209–10).

Marc Lafrance, "Skin and the Self: Cultural Theory and
Anglo-American Psychoanalysis", Body and Society 15 (3) 2009 : 3-24, 9-10.