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This paper deals with phenomena of pathological visual perceptions observed during the psycho-analytic treatment of patients who were not psychotic and did not suffer from epilepsy or any organic disorder where similar phenomena are not infrequent. I am concerned specifically here with the phenomenon of objects coming closer (and becoming larger) and of objects receding from the patient. These objects were either real or imagined ones. These pathological perceptions proved to be regressive phenomena which had a definite psychic structure, content, and function, and were accessible to analysis and interpretation. It was found that these phenomena occurred in situations of acute emotional conflict when the danger of a break with reality seemed to be imminent. I should like to illustrate these points with clinical observations.
Case 1. A 36-year-old woman had come for analysis because of a skin condition from which she had suffered for the past nineteen years without any relief, although she had been continually under the care of competent skin specialists. This patient suffered, among other symptoms, from an unusually severe constipation. The experience to be dealt with here occurred toward the end of the second year of her analysis, when her skin condition had improved and the analysis was bringing to the fore her deeply repressed castration complex. A wealth of material clearly indicated that castration was felt by her as an anal loss, as if faeces were slipping away from her and disappearing. This patient also suffered from an intense fear of mice. She could go into a faint on seeing a mouse. Once she even had a fainting spell when someone mentioned having seen a mouse in the room where she had been.
The patient was, at this point, in an acute conflict as to whether to discontinue the analysis, rationalizing this with her marked improvement, or to stay and to have her fantasies exposed in the analysis. A dream highlighting this conflict was summed up by