You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This stimulating book is both a fascinating psychoanalytic clinical research and an engaging theoretical exposition on the symptom of vertigo. In her systematic discussion of the subtle and complex role of vertigo, Quinodoz takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the various forms of emotionally determined vertigo and their psychic functions and associated anxieties, fantasies, and pleasures. Her explorations venture well beyond the limited province of medically oriented opinion and the realm of transient clinical symptom to a consideration of a broader range of clinical phenomena and their implications for object relationships. Here, symptomatic vertigo is accorded a prominent intrapsychic role in defense against conflict of both preoedipal and oedipal origins, most specifically as a somatic means of regulating object relations. Throughout the book, the author amply demonstrates the utility of her broadened formulations with case material grounded in the moment-to-moment interchanges between analyst and patient.
Physically caused experiences of vertigo seem to occur when our bodies receive contradictory information from different sensory systems and have difficulty integrating this disparate data in ways that preserve our sense of equilibrium. In Quinodoz's view, psychically determined vertigo similarly arises from an anxietyladen experience of incompatible emotional information that destabilizes our psychic equilibrium. That is, the emotional information can neither be successfully contained by the existing psychic structure nor be combined within it so as to form a new, more integrated whole.
Her thoughtful exposition draws heavily on the contemporary Kleinian perspective; it is informed by Freudian theory and the