ABSTRACT
During the second year of his analysis, Mr. D, a thirty-year-old academic with a flamboyantly rebellious cultural and political outlook who entered analysis owing to work inhibitions, relational problems, and diffuse anxiety and unhappiness, suddenly started experiencing dizzy spells. In his analysis, Mr. D came to realise that, once again, he had been communicating, psychosomatically and hysterically, that he was not an intact, phallic, and competitive male, but a wounded, in fact, a crippled man. D’s childhood illness emerged when a “sibling” who had suddenly arrived in his life during his Oedipal phase, dethroning him from his status as the only child, disappeared from it just as suddenly. The trauma of hospitalisation, early separation from his primary carers, repeated intrusive procedures, separation anxiety. In Mr. E’s case, however, even his self-torment was always tinged with an excitement that could only be described as sexual, though such excitement was a consequence, not the aim of the violence.
