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The subject of phobias has absorbed my interest for the past several years. I have particularly attempted to gain insights into them by studying the relationships of phobic patients in areas not directly concerned with the phobic symptom itself. It is important to study the characterology of the phobic patient as well as other affective states which seem to coincide or alternate with the acuteness of the phobic involvement. The relationship of claustrophobia to depression is one such area.
What I most appreciated about Dr. Weiss's paper was his emphasis on the phenomenology of the phobic state itself rather than on the particular fantasies involved. I would have preferred even more of this emphasis, since nothing is so confusing as to attempt to understand so complicated a symptom as agoraphobia without underlining the basic ego states involved.
The literature on agoraphobia shows us what a host of fantasies can be expressed in the street fear. A partial listing, which includes the case reports of Weiss, Deutsch, Lewin, Bergler, Abraham, Katan and others, would delineate fantasies of birth, death, pregnancy,
sexual temptations such as prostitution, exhibitionism and fellatio, aggressive wishes, outbursts or attacks, as well as oral wishes and fears of separation, fusion and annihilation. These fantasies run the gamut from oral to oedipal wishes and fears. Of course the case material is important, because only from such reports can we derive the information to help us formulate and classify the position of such states as agoraphobia in our schemata of the psychology of the neurosis. Helene Deutsch attempted to do this when she found the phobias to be midway between the hysterias and obsessional neuroses.
The essence of Dr. Weiss's presentation seems to be contained in the following quote: “When a repressed ego state in toto, which contains these impulses, threatens to replace the adult ego, then the thus threatened ego loses the sensation of its stability. Furthermor