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A Rabbi's wife experienced a severe attack of panic after ascending to the top of a mountain and looking down its sides. The attack seemed to be a reliving of a traumatic childhood experience, while at the same time denying this experience by maintaining a position of goodness and loftiness through an identification with Moses, the traditional and heroic spokesman for the superego. The intention here is to show that this experience, which embodied her childhood sexuality and aggression, in conjunction with her early identifications, ethnic origin, psychosoical environment, and autonomous ego functions, contributed in adolescence to the identification with Moses and in early adulthood to the formation of the identity of 'The Rabbi's Wife'. Neurotic symptoms were precipitated when this identity was threatened.
The patient was an intelligent woman with a pretty face and plump body. She had been described by various acquaintances as 'gracious', 'proud', and 'Lady Bountiful'. She was always going out of her way to do good to others and felt uncomfortable when someone attempted to reciprocate. 'Badness' in every form caused her to become furious. She idealized her husband and denied his imperfections.
She came for analysis at the age of 31 as a result of a number of attacks of severe panic following a gradual withdrawal from social contacts.
Some two years prior to the beginning of the patient's analysis, the Rabbi took a post in an eastern city, and her feelings of withdrawal and isolation began at that time. She feared this move, suspecting her husband to be motivated by an interest in money and power. She was afraid that he might become a tool of the wealthy members of the congregation. Her uneasiness increased as she saw her husband vacillate when a powerful clique attempted to control the temple.
Shortly after her arrival in this new community, she became closely attached to a woman, Mrs. S., whom she discovered more than a year later to have 'loose and dubi