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THIS PAPER DEALS WITH INNER SPACE OF WOMEN AROUND THREE CENTRAL themes:
1The dangerous content of the inside of the uterus, mainly the menstrual blood.
2The dangerous space inside the uterus.
3The symbolism of the pregnancy-abortion-pregnancy cycle.
The clinical material is based on the psychoanalytic treatment of a young woman.
A native Israeli of French origin and a student of the arts, Ella, 24 years old, complained of an increasing fear that something might happen to her parents, especially when she was not at home. She also worried about her short-term relationships with men and her unsatisfactory sex life. She was preoccupied with small wounds on her skin and with the idea that she was contaminated with all kinds of diseases. The skin affliction precipitated her decision to seek therapy.
Ella had been a difficult first child for her mother, and began suffering from allergies in babyhood. Her overprotective and overanxious mother overfed Ella and took her from one physician to another. When she was 3 years old, her sister was born. According to her mother, Ella had "no time" to envy her sister because she was thrust into kindergarten prematurely, an act which she interpreted as a sign of her mother's desire to be alone with the new baby. (Her sister had suffered an accident shortly before Ella began analysis.)