ABSTRACT
Panic attacks are a major mental health problem in the United States. Patients with panic attacks use up a lot of time in medical practices and emergency rooms, when they show up repeatedly, thinking they are having a heart attack or a stroke or some other medical crisis. Milrod and her colleagues have studied a traditional psychoanalytic approach to panic disorder. They have written a manual of what they call "Panic-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapy" and have received large grants from the government to study their approach. The dissociation between ideas and affects brings up an interesting connection between panic attacks and obsessional neurosis. The chapter presents the case study of three panic patients. It summarizes some of the generalizations that have been made about panic patients and then evaluates them in terms of therapist's own clinical data. The chapter suggests some ways in which therapists might revise their theory of panic attacks and test out a newly formulated theory.
