Agoraphobia and fantasies of birth.

Abstract

Regarding the analytic material from a female patient suffering from a severe agoraphobia there are theoretical problems concerning this phobia and its relation to phantasies of birth in opposition to another phantasy, that of a
lethal symbiosis with the dead-alive. On one level, agoraphobia is presented as the difficulty of going in and out
and crossing, in a space split into an “inside” —representing the phantasy world— and an “outside” —representing the
ordinary world—. This “inside” endoses an encapsulated nucleus, the content of which is constituted by the beloved and much needed but at the same time feared and damaged objects. This encapsulated nucleus of semidestroyed and internalized ob jets has to be permanently controlled by the phantasy of a lethal symbiosis, by means of criss-cross identifications, in consequence of which what is halfalive erupts in the person and semi-destroys her without really killing her (phantasy of hell with eternal suffering because there is no total annihilation). This relation is controlled by the presence of an object substituting for the
dead-alive, which is the accompanying object, and maintained in the analysis through the transformation of the analyst into the accompanying analyst. The living-outside-accompanying-manageable object is substituted for the deadalive-inside-unmanageable object. Through the control of this substitution the lethal symbiosis is avoided and life can go on