Emotional Vertigo (PDF)

There are few people who have never experienced vertigo, and in many instances the symptom has a psychic rather than physical cause. In this book, Danielle Quinodoz gives a phenomenological account of various forms of psychosomatic vertigo, drawing on both Freudian and Kleinian theory to support her definition of the symptom as an expression of separation anxiety concerned with movements in space and time.
Through a clinical case study of a particular patient, Luc, the author describes the development of symptoms, and at each stage of Luc's treatment identifies the different types of vertigo which appear to express different anxieties. Among these are fusion-related vertigo, vertigo related to being dropped, vertigo due to attraction to the void and competition-related vertigo, which appears in an Oedipal context. Through this description of Quinodoz' clinical work we gain an insight into the vicissitudes in the object relationship and the role of the analyst in making the patient aware of the psychological cause of their symptom. The analyst experiences the translation of sensation into representation and is able to understand vertigo as a reflection of their earliest relationships, rather than as an alien and incomprehensible symptom.
Dr Quinodoz goes on to make the link between anxiety and pleasure by examining why we are attracted to sports in which we are forced to confront voids or vertiginous slopes. Patients often experience vertigo as a split-off part of their ego, enjoying risk-taking as if on a quest to push back the boundaries of life and time. Thus Quinodoz argues, vertigo is inexorably linked with equilibrium, suspended as it is in a parodoxical position between anxiety and pleasure.
Emotional Vertigo offers unique insight into the object relationship and its resonance in bodily symptoms.