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This paper was written in 2011 for this collection in Spanish and translated by Ana Pieczanski.
In this chapter, I provide a review of the two cases of analysis that motivated me to begin researching lethargy. In the case ‘material’, associations and corresponding actions regarding the tragic difficulties of pregnancy, abortion and childbirth were dominant.
Reviewing my most significant work, ranging from the 1950s to 2010, I selected 55 cases for publication in the 2010 book Actual neurosis.1 Many of these address ‘lethargy’.
Below is a summary of the analysis for two cases: for Palene, my first publication in 1952;2 and for Yanira, published four years later, when I discovered3 – or it was revealed to me – the secret of lethargy.4
A 39-year-old woman was brought in for a consultation regarding a serious melancholic-lethargic5 reaction, resulting from the death of her only daughter, Dirse, a 12-year-old girl who was run over by a train.
She experienced an extreme symbiosis with Dirse, and suffered from histero-epileptic attacks shortly after giving birth. Palene began suffering
from severe vaginal hemorrhages two years prior to Dirse’s accident, which worsened to the point where she was about to undergo surgery. Her husband was hospitalized with paranoid schizophrenia since shortly after Dirse’s birth.
When I interviewed her the day after the accident, she had been in a lethargic state for 24 hours. At times, she would leave this state and speak like a child, at other times she pulled at her clothes and hit herself. When I returned two days later, she was more connected. When she saw me she asked for her daughter. A month later, she went home and continued her treatment at my office, accompanied by a family member. During the first two or three months of treatment, she would sometimes experience an attack when leaving the office; she would fall to the ground and become cyanotic, her body rigid. After a few minutes, she would shake and hit her head an