You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Psychoanalytic studies of patients who used spider symbolism for the expression of their repressed (perverse) impulses and conflicts revealed, as important genetic factors, pregenital, particularly anal, fixations and unresolved preoedipal relationships with their mothers. The spider symbolism as well as the symptoms most frequently found associated with it, such as severe sleep disturbances and phobias, are also an indication of unresolved separation conflicts and a high degree of ambivalence which intensifies bisexuality and the problems of sexual identification. The mechanisms of defense employed in spider symbolism and in phobias are denial, externalization, projection, splitting, and displacement. They indicate the primitive, ambivalent, narcissistic ego organization of this phase. The personalities of these patients and of the mothers in cases where it was possible to study them showed marked paranoid trends. They also used psychosomatic symptoms in stress situations, either episodically or more persistently for the immediate (somatic) discharge of threatening impulses. The spider symbolism in most cases remained latent and became manifest in traumatic life situations and in analysis when the phobic and psychosomatic defenses were invalidated. In the analytic situation the spider symbolism was indicative of a specific mother transference.
I have tried to elaborate on some of the factors operating in the genesis and choice of the spider symbolism and to deal more fully with its dynamic and economic functions. I particularly wanted to draw attention to the diagnostic and prognostic significance of spider symbolism in clinical practice.