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IN THIS PAPER I SHALL OFFER A NEW EXPLANATION FOR SYMPTOMS of disequilibrium, which occurs when there is a rapid acceleration of the fluid in the semicircular canals. There are a number of interrelated symptoms which involve altered states of consciousness and which could be subsumed under the term disequilibrium: vertigo, dizziness, giddiness, lightheadedness, feeling a sense of imbalance, or a feeling that one is spinning. Such symptoms have previously been attributed to sexual excitement (see Freud [1894] on vertigo as a symptom of actual neurosis; Glenn [1974] on physiological concomitants of sexual excitement), or ego, id, and superego regression to preoedipal states (Isakower, 1936), or a regressive revival of being cast away by an archaic superego agency (Peto, 1970); they have been explained as hysterical or anxiety symptoms or related to physiological factors such as orthostatic hypotension, hypoglycemia, cerebrovascular malfunction, general anesthesia, and vestibular-cerebellar disorders. My clinical observations impelled me to reconstruct a particular experience in infancy