ABSTRACT
Damien is a fifty-two-year-old man of average height who works as a business consultant; he seems extremely dynamic. He has some psychoanalytic knowledge and reading that he later uses as a defence system rather than as an aid to understanding his symptoms. He keeps returning to his fear of vertigo spells that might thwart his new project. For doctors in France, a hypochondriac problem is an imaginary problem, and therefore non-existent. The somatic excitations perceived by the central nervous system cause a signal anxiety that leads the patient to consult a doctor, because he thinks he is suffering from an illness that only a doctor can recognise, which for some patients leads to a major medical nomadism with severe disappointments; the patient is seeking the impossible—he wants to put a name to his problems, to reassure himself.
