On Street Fear1

The opportunity to re-examine the problem of street fear presented itself when a particularly clear-cut case embodied various elements described in the literature on the subject, such as the erotization of walking, described by Freud (8) and Abraham (1), and the exhibitionistic, voyeuristic urges and birth fantasies noted by Helene Deutsch (4), the superego conflicts described by Alexander (2) and the promiscuity—the latter also noted by Katan (9). The central theme which tied these various elements together seemed not sufficiently emphasized in the previous literature; that is, the fear of pregnancy because of promiscuous urges in the street, and the urge to have a baby as a restitutive drive.

The patient entered analysis at the age of thirty-five. She was married to a successful musician, a hypochondriacal man about ten years her senior. She had a daughter aged nine with whose care she had very little contact. Her symptoms were severe anxiety with heart palpitation whenever she went into the street, in restaurants or trains, aeroplanes or cars. She stayed in her room most of the time, talked very little, was unable to care adequately for her household, and complained of pains and aches in her limbs, neck, etc. She had had a period of treatment with a previous analyst in another city, which had afforded her a little relief of acute anxiety, but made no appreciable change in her symptoms, mainly because she could not make free associations—or even talk—during the analytic sessions.

Her life history showed no complaints until a year or so after her marriage. She came from a Southern family in rather straitened circumstances; there was a brother two years older, a sister two years younger, and another sister four and a half years younger. Her father had travelled a great deal when she was little. Most obviously important in her early development was the fact that her mother had a man friend, a neighbour, who used to visit the patient's mother in a room next to