ABSTRACT
From his earliest writings, Freud has treated vertigo as.a major manifestation of anxiety. In 1895, when he first described anxiety neurosis, he wrote: ‘“Vertigo” occupies a prominent place in the group of symptoms of anxiety neurosis. In its mildest form it is best described as “giddiness”; in its severer manifestations, as “attacks of vertigo” (with or without anxiety), it must be classed among the gravest symptoms of neurosis’ (1895b: 95). Originally, Freud thought that this applied to locomotor vertigo only, but then he added: ‘According to my observations, vertigo produced by heights, mountains and precipices is also often present in anxiety neurosis’ (1895b: 96). Later Freud would often speak of the symptom of vertigo, either mentioning it on its own and assigning a specific symbolic meaning to it for a particular patient, or else placing it in the context of his general theory of anxiety. Thus he wrote in his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis:
The total [anxiety] attack can be represented by a single, intensely developed symptom, by a tremor, a vertigo [my italics; D.Q.], by palpitation of the heart, or by dyspnoea; and the general feeling by which we recognize anxiety may be absent or have become indistinct. Yet these conditions, which we describe as ‘anxiety equivalents’, have to be equated with anxiety in all clinical and aetiological respects.
