Of creatures large and small: size anxiety, psychic size, shame, and the analytic situation

The authors investigates what he terms "size anxiety" and "psychic size." Psychic size is composed of experiences of smallness and largeness with respect to parental figures, fantasies of being large or small, and the meanings of such experiences and fantasies in specific two-person situations. Size anxiety includes the anxiety about being a particular size with respect to a significant other (real or fantasized). Drawing on Gulliver's Travels and on Ferenczi's paper on Gulliver fantasies, the author discusses how experiences of psychic size, rivalry, and shame provide important analytic material. Dreams and clinical vignettes illustrate the thesis.