HYPOCHONDRIA. PART 2

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

In the case of hypochondria, a person weakens the introjects of alien formations within the self, which must be understood as traces of a real traumatic experience in relations with primary objects, with the help of their projection onto their own body. Richter discovered in a patient with cardiac neurosis that the heart is a representation of a nursing mother, combining the desire for symbiosis with the desire to destroy her. Grosh hinted at the objective nature of the hypochondriacal syndrome, understanding it as the equivalent of an incorporated enemy. Nissen also describes the introjective nature of the I part in hypochondriacs, his patients perceive this dissociated part "almost specifically as a" capsule ", a" core of tension "" capable of spreading at any moment.

In the dynamics of hypochondria, two stages of defense follow each other - first, the bodily representation is dissociated from the self, so that the body can be used as an external object. The internalized traumatic object experience is then projected onto it, and it can assume its threatening character and simultaneously function as a satellite (this very hostile object). As in psychogenic pain and self-harm, the body simultaneously displays the destructive qualities of the relationship that originally emanated from the primary object, and reactive aggression and hatred towards the primary object, but at the same time functions as a surrogate mother accompanying the person.

Common triggers for hypochondriacal anxiety.

Buying or building your first home of your own. To own a house means self-determination, growing up, wealth, but it also means the end point of the route, being bound to this house, in which a person will one day die.

Each exam is a transition from one level of identity to another, more advanced. The exam means freedom from addiction, the previous stage of identity, more self-determination and autonomy. On the other hand, the freedom to reveal identity is increasingly limited, a person becomes attached to an increasingly defined identity, which can be experienced as lack of freedom and limitation.

Marriage and pregnancy are not only signs of final maturation, but also a fixation on a partner and child, whose existence determines the parents' identity and their lives for decades.

Bondi-Argentieri understands hypochondria as a kind of unauthorized unconscious localization and concretization of death, since death cannot be accepted as an inevitable natural event coming from outside.