Symbols of terror: The witch/vampire, the spider, and the shark.

Abstract

Three symbols of terror are examined as representations of preoedipal conflicts thai intrude upon conscious awareness and. interfere with current functioning. To understand each of these symbols and their origins in a state of chronic terror, it is necessary to understand the complete life history of the patient. All three symbols-the witch/vampire, the spider, and the shark-relate to earliest experiences within the parent/infant dyad. We suggest that although all three symbols relate to the dimension of oral aggression, they can be placed conceptually along a continuum of distance from the quality of humanness. Clinical examples are given to illustrate the use of these symbols by patients in treatment and their theoretical implications. This article examines three symbols that embody the residues of early parent-child experience and arise in the context of the transference relationship, dreams, and childhood fantasies. Like all symbols, they represent complex emotional experience encoded within an intense immediate stimulus. Their formation is the end result of condensation, displacement, repression, and projective identification emanating from the individual's identifications from the past, aspirations for the future, and cultural heritage. The single stimulus, then, is overdetermined and reflects a myriad of life experience crystallized within one "as if" category, which then makes this experience readily available as part of recent experience. Time is telescoped within these Requests for reprints should be sent to Robert C. Lane,