ABSTRACT
In his evocative and difficult book, The Claustrum, Donald Meltzer offers an investigation and description of claustrophobic phenomena. The concept of the claustrum is an unconscious phantasy of a space inside the body of the internal mother that has been forcibly entered and occupied. A sense of fraudulence infects life in the claustrum of the head/breast, where no meaning can grow through authentic struggle. Each compartment is suffused by characteristic atmosphere and attitudes, lived through the intruder's unconscious mind. Meltzer's descriptions of the phantasied dwelling places and the feelings they generate are immediately recognizable. The descriptions of compartments represent the emotional geography of the claustrum. Inhabiting the world means living not in relationships, but in transactions. Studying the films through a psychoanalytic lens brings into focus the critical factor in determining the degree of entrapment suffered by the self caught in a claustrophobic world, devoid of emotional intimacy and filled with dread.
