The enigma of hypochondria we focused on (See Introduction), all the more striking in the descriptions that the dimension of explanation is absent (See Sect.​ 1.​1), can be deciphered if it is thought of differently as the actualization, in conditions other than sleep and nocturnal dreams, of what is just a variant of dream, a similar transformation of the subject into object(s) where contradiction disappears as well as the other person. Projection here supplants perception, putting an end to the splitting between Real and Imaginary, whereby the link to another is transformed, banning the very issue of alterity. The emergence of the other person as different from oneself, which is also marked by the allergic attack, therefore appearing as the equivalent of a residue of the Real impossible to transform into a dream, leads on the contrary to an oneiric material in an insomniac way in the hypochondriac: by an absolute narcissistic shift on himself, opposites objectivize, substituting the continuous movement of a spiral thought that spins around in the form of soliloquy to an alternative that rigidly imposes an unequivocal choice. By a total conversion into Identical, contradiction weaves a new logic: there is now only a single object in which the subject dissolves, coinciding there with the Imaginary that has become the Real, internal as much as external. That is to say how the lack of a theoretical status to clearly think hypochondria is linked to the underlying lack of a theoretical status identifying projection, since what is in question there is the imaginary space which is specified by magical thinking, a dynamic controlled by a fascination where the distance between subject and object fades away. This also shows how the theory of Sami-Ali that filled in this theoretical gap by giving projection a specific status that fits into a metapsychology (Sami-Ali 1970, pp.163–218), provides our study with a thinking tool thanks to which “clues” can be spotted, indicating the effect of projection where truth gives way to influence. Analogous to the concept of “uncanny” that Freud elaborated in 1914 (Freud 1919, pp.217–253), the same relationship of reciprocal inclusions presides here in what is a relationship to another person whose singular trait is to be, unknowingly, a relationship to oneself. This symmetric structure which is the structure of dream where outside and inside are equivalents, only partially invades perception: limited to the body alone, it engenders a Real that results from the duplication of the subject who ignores it and, like him, reflects the image of its double.

If contradiction disappears with the other person where projection replaces perception, transforming it into the ambiguous stooge of a drama whose only theme is self-image, this allows us to re-assess the meanings, repeatedly expressed, that remain a blind spot until projective action can explain them.

So we now face the one who has a passion for medical knowledge, who builds his own anatomy and pathogenesis, who erects his own explanatory systems. It is both familiar and strange (with the meaning of unheimliche) for a physician to be confronted with his caricatured double (Delahousse and Hitter-Spinelli 1980, p.44), or:

In this drama, the roles are sometimes assigned to a single actor, who alternately puts on and takes off his mask to talk to himself: but, more often, it is played by two people, between whom there is a similarity and a connivance so misleading that they allow these enigmatic twins, although the viewer cannot notice anything, to swap their roles (Maurel 1973, p.80).

There is always a symmetric space where the other person represents a narcissistic double, exactly as in paranoia. Three major terms seem clear, providing hypochondria with a unique structure: