Claustrophobia1

Abstract

In ‘Claustrophobia’, Lewin references Edgar Allan Poe&s;s ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ (1842) , evoking the type of claustrophobic fantasy (and imagery) of the dread of being caught and crushed by the gradual closing in of surrounding space. In this short and rich paper (1935), Lewin briefly references the theories of claustrophobia from the 1900s as morbid fear and hysteria anxiety of being buried alive or shut in an enclosed space ( Jones 1912 ; Ferenczi 1922 ) and ideas related to the wish and fear of being within one&s;s mother. Lewin, an American analyst, studied at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute (1925–1927). He attributes the aetiology of claustrophobic anxieties to the discoveries of Melanie Klein (1932) in her work with child patients and the analysis of their unconscious fantasy and terror of a united couple of mother and father engaged in intercourse inside the maternal body with a dread of expulsion by father&s;s penis. Lewin praises Klein as the only analyst who answered Freud&s;s question (1925) ‘of what is the claustrophobic afraid?’ Lewin describes a female patient with an intrauterine fantasy of enclosure in the maternal body, feeling safe inside, without anxiety, until the penis threatens to touch her (and, by association, to destroy or push her outside). Anxiety appears only when threatened with the defence against claustrophobic anxiety of expulsion by the father&s;s penis. This theory is later developed by John Steiner ( Chapter 8 ) in his ground-breaking concept of ‘psychic retreat’ (1979). He offers a second cause of claustrophobia, the threat of being born. In Phobic Symptoms and Dream Interpretation (1952 , p. 203), he extends the theory of the claustrum to include agoraphobic anxiety as a defence against enclosure by projection onto open space of one&s;s primitive fears. This concept was taken up by Henri Rey in 1979, in his seminal concept of there being no place of safety for the ‘claustro-agoraphobic’ person ( Chapter 7 ). Lewin&s;s ideas of the child&s;s curiosity and fantasies of birth, embryonic origin, and life in the uterus predate Money-Kyrle&s;s classic papers: Cognitive Development (1968) and The Aim of Psychoanalysis (1971). In 1950 he argued that the claustrum fantasy arises in the actual nursing situation as the infantile ‘oral triad’: the wish to devour (eat), to be eaten, and to sleep. 19 Lewin emphasizes the prominence of skin and respiratory phenomena in foetal fantasies and their connection to claustrophobic anxieties of being inside the mother. The erotic skin and foetal breathing fantasies in intrauterine life are taken up by Esther Bick ( Chapter 4 ), Frances Tustin, Albert Mason ( Chapter 6 ), and Donald Meltzer ( Chapter 5 ). Lewin was influenced by Weiss&s;s ideas ( Weiss 1935 , p. 67) of spatial components found in agoraphobia with uneven surfaces and the ground giving way (Lewin, p. 205). Lewin&s;s Body as Phallus (1933) , Sleep, the Mouth, and the Dream Screen (1946), and Addenda to the Theory of Oral Erotism (1950) contribute further to the concepts of claustrophobia and agoraphobia.