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«In our cases, the part of the mind which is split off is “thrust into darkness”, as the Titans are imprisoned in the crater of Etna, and can shake the earth but can never emerge into the light of day».
Ernesto is lying on the couch, in the throes of a panic attack that lifts his stomach in violent contractions, as though a mighty alien force inside his body were struggling to get out, stretching his belly to the point the skin might rupture. Like split-off parts of the mind, the Titans no longer want to remain in the darkness they had been thrust into!
During Ernesto's long analysis, I had frequently asked myself who these «obscure threatening inhabitants» of his body were, endowed with such intense and violent strength and capable of bursting onto the psychic scene abruptly and with no apparent warning.
I ask myself the same question every time I receive, understand and try to treat patients who suffer from an anxiety pathology (in the D.S.M III and IV, the category that Freud had identified in his significant work «On the Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome from Neurasthenia under the Description “Anxiety Neurosis”» [Freud, 1895] is narrowly listed as PAD — panic attack disorder — and GAD — generalized anxiety disorder). The anxiety appears in their narrating quite unexpectedly, almost out of the blue. It is acute and will rapidly turn into a threatening sense of danger, the terror of losing control, of dying, of going mad and doing crazy things. In the narration of patients in the throes of such experiences, there is never any indication beforehand that might announce and signal an eventual difficulty, nor any introspective thought that might reveal a possible horizon to look into, a psychic trace to pursue. On the contrary, these episodes are set within a description of an apparently normal