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Phobias and panic states have in recent years become the subject of intense interest in psychiatry. Psychiatric journals are flooded with publications on the biological and behavioral aspects of these conditions which have to some extent obstructed the reader's awareness of the contributions of psychoanalysis to the understanding and treatment of these conditions. It would be ironic if, during this period of the widening scope of the clinical applications of psychoanalytic treatment, the psychoanalyst were to relinquish to the nonanalytically oriented therapist this crucial clinical field upon which psychoanalytic theory and its clinical applications are based.
By devoting this issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry to the recent advances in the psychoanalytic understanding and treatment of phobias, we aim to provide our readers with a more balanced view of our present knowledge about phobias, and alert them to the fact that the contemporary psychoanalyst shares with Freud his intense interest in the subject and continues the search for a more effective conceptualization and treatment of these conditions, which takes into account new data and observations from within and without the field of psychoanalysis.
The classical approach in analyzing phobias aims to uncover the unconscious fantasy operating behind the symptom and reconstruct the original trauma, facilitating in the process the patient's capacity to come to terms with it. The original trauma may be an actual experience or a fantasy, and is conceptualized as the point of origin of the neurosis and the central focus of the psychoanalytic