This morning (Thursday) at the Oral History Workshop of the American Psychoanalytic Association Meeting, Nellie Thompson, in discussing the life and contributions of Bertram Lewin mentioned his 1935 paper on “Claustrophobia”, reminding me that I had come across it years ago while preparing a discussion of the film, How to Make an American Quilt.
In his paper, Lewin tells of a young woman who had “ordered her life in general so as to escape marriage and the male sex.” From her arrangement of her room, her dreams, and her associations, Lewin convincingly concluded that “the patient was imagining herself a foetus in the maternal body—but this idea did not cause anxiety. Indeed, on the contrary, this was an idea of safety or defense. The anxiety arose when the defensive wall was threatened, that is to say, when the penis entered or threatened to touch her . . . The intrauterine fantasy is one of defense (flight) and relief from anxiety; the anxiety arises with the idea of being disturbed or dislodged by the father or father’s penis.” The other fear that disturbed the patient’s fantasy of being in the womb was of being born. Finn, the young woman who is the center of How to Make an American Quilt, has a similar problem. Read the rest of this entry »