“My hypothesis is that man is hampered in his meeting of this environmental crisis by a severe and pervasive apathy which is based on feelings and attitudes of which he is unconscious.  The lack of analytic literature about this subject suggests to me that we analysts are in the grip of this common apathy.” Harold Searles, MD 1972

Conference Committee: Carolyn Curcio, LICSW, Maurine Kelly, PhD, Karyne Messina, PhD, Emily Schlesinger, LCSW

Friday, March 19, 2021 12:00 – 1:30pm EST Online via Zoom

 

As we are all feeling claustro-agoraphobic in lockdown, perhaps a return to these classic themes will give new meaning to the palpable and primitive anxieties at the threat of having to emerge from the claustrum. In this talk, Susan Finkelstein will present the history of thinking related to claustrophobia, the maternal claustrum, fears of invading the mother’s body/being invaded by the mother, and subsequent sexual phobias.

 

“The phallic phase leads the child into a maze of ‘claustrum’ fantasies, in which some children…get hopelessly lost. They want to touch, enter and know the secrets of all interiors but are frightened of dark rooms and dream of jails and tombs” (Homburger, (1937). Psycho. Quarterly, pp. 171-172).

 

The presentation will conclude by discussing the 1942 Jacques Tourneau film Cat People, as well as an analytic case presented by Jamieson Webster where an intensification of claustro-agoraphobic anxieties surge during the resumption of in-person treatment, dreams by the patient showing themes around the dread of intercourse and fears of contamination, infection and the genocide of babies.