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In 1895, when Freud isolated anxiety neurosis from neurasthenia, he pointed out that
Vertigo occupies a prominent place in the group of symptoms of anxiety neurosis. In its mildest form it is best described as 'giddiness' … The vertigo of anxiety neurosis is not rotatory nor does it especially affect certain planes or directions, like Ménière's vertigo. It belongs to the class of locomotor or coordinatory vertigo… (Freud, 1895, p. 95).
Since Abraham (1913), vertigo is considered a phenomenon closely linked with erotization of the muscular function. Ferenczi (1914) stated in a brief study:
Suddenly, this (unconscious) phantasy is destroyed by the doctor's warning that the session is ended; he suddenly becomes conscious of the actual facts… This sudden alteration of the psychic setting, the disillusionment (when one feels as though 'fallen from the clouds'), may call up the same subjective feeling as is experienced in sudden and unexpected change of posture when one is unable to adapt oneself suitably by compensating movements and by means of the sense organs—that is to say, to preserve one's 'equilibrium'—which is the essence of giddiness… it forms an example of the manner in which psychic states of excitement overflow into the bodily sphere, which may help in the understanding of hysterical conversion. With a feeling of giddiness after the end of the analytic session, probably the feeling of the psychic change-over can only transform itself into the sensation of giddiness because both processes deal with an analogous disturbance of equilibrium.
It is this kind of vertigo that is referred to in the present study, and not the classic vertigo of Ménière. Spanish and French terminology is not clear on this point, unlike English, which has a precise term, 'giddiness'. We feel that Rycroft's conclusions (1953) can be applied to the sensations of giddiness that the patient presents, alternating with Ménière's vertigo.
Rycroft pointed out the relationship of vertigo to a