Echinococcosis

A cyst is growing inside you. Slowly, silently, sometimes over years. A parasite — the dog tapeworm or the fox tapeworm — has lodged itself in your body, most often in the liver, sometimes in the lung, and there it has formed a capsule-like structure that grows and grows. A foreign body that nestles in and claims space it has no right to. That encapsulates itself, seals itself off, and in doing so displaces the surrounding tissue.

Medically, echinococcosis is a parasitic disease that urgently requires medical treatment. From a psychosomatic perspective, an additional question arises: what has lodged itself in your inner life that doesn't belong there? What foreign structure has burrowed so deeply into your thinking, your feeling, your sense of self that you take it for a part of you — even though it constricts you from within?