ABSTRACT
This paper is an initial reflection on the subject of panic attacks, based on the presentation of clinical material from the ongoing analysis of a female patient with severe pathology, of which such attacks were from the beginning the most conspicuous symptom. This clinical description is useful in my view because the “panic attack” is often attributed in the psychiatric literature to organic factors, so that analysis is held to be contraindicated. My chapter concludes with an attempt to define the general theoretical model underlying this symptom.
