The Unity of Body, Sadism and Dizziness

Helen Hoffmann, born in 1866, has been for several years under my observation. The family history is of no importance. A daughter of her sister has a chronic psychosis. The patient, who looks about forty-five years old, complains that she has terrible states of anxiety, especially when walking on the street. “When I get this anxiety state I cannot walk further. I run into myself. It breaks me into pieces. I am like a spray. I lose my center of gravity. I have no weight. I am quite mechanical. I am gone to pieces, I am like a marionette. There is a lack of something that could keep me together. I am not on the earth. I am somewhere else, I am in between. I am rigid, I cannot cry. Once I had an uncanny dream. I floated without any feeling of belonging anywhere. In the morning when I awakened all was flown away. I have no time before me. I don't know how it will go on. I am turned upside down and wrong side up, I am only half a human being. I felt already as a child that I am not a whole being. I have been pushed back in school. I never was as happy as the others even when I was eight or nine years old. I could have been happier.” She knew already when nine years old that two girls had to die. “Indeed they died afterwards. That is a terrible feeling. They suddenly looked blue and yellow.” She can't hear talking of natural death. “If I hear about it I melt away and remain so for weeks. I am completely in pieces, there is no ground under the feet when you are not on the earth. I feel the ground very rarely.” She knew also about the death of her mother and sister beforehand. “When I am melting I have no hands, I go into a doorway in order not to be trampled on. Everything is flying away from me. In the doorway I can gather together the pieces of my body.” When she passes wooden fences the boards tear her head. “It is as if something is thrown in me, bursts me asunder. Why do I divide myself in different pieces? I feel that I am without poise, that my personality is meltin