Vertigo, from anxiety to pleasure Every form of vertigo goes with a form of pleasure Pleasure and fusion-related vertigo: de-idealization of fusion Pleasure and vertigo related to being dropped: de-idealization

Michael Balint (1959) has mentioned the ‘thrills of pleasure’ of those who enjoy the giddy sensation of fairground merry-go-rounds; these thrills recall the ‘cries of joy’ of the young child thrown up in the air and caught by his uncle to which Freud refers in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a: 393). Can one and the same situation then cause anxiety as well as pleasure? On what conditions does either depend? The person who pays to go up in the big wheel at a fair knows what awaits him: why does he look forward to a dose of vertigo? Is it because he is certain that it will be no more than a dose and one moreover that, to some extent, serves to demystify the vertigo?