ABSTRACT
The issue of smell or odors in the context of the analytic endeavor can be quite challenging. This chapter presents a case of a patient who had emitted excessive body odor. Deciphering the idiomatic expression “I smell a rat” (in his native language it is common to say “it does not smell good”) hidden behind his existential situation, helped to understand his relational world in terms of ongoing suspicion. By bringing to therapy his worst issues, in their most tangible form, this patient seemed to test the therapist: would she stay with him in the room, or would she reject him? It seemed this was his only way of telling a profound truth about his intimate life, to enact primary experiences by the sensorial system. The affinity between this sensorial experience and the metaphoric meaning of an idiomatic expression helped bridging the gap between two modes of expression in human experience.
