Alvy also suffers from anxieties, phobias, and irrational fears, a set of symptoms belonging to neurosis, a condition largely diagnosed by the late nineteenth century psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, namechecked by Alvy in his opening monologue delivered to camera in confessional style close-up, where he admits to us that he is going through "a life crisis." If normally we would associate the use of close-up with a moment of emotional connection between two characters in a film (and indeed, Alvy and Alison's first meeting is filmed in just this way), here Alvy is establishing an emotional connection with the audience, an issue I shall return to later. Alvy is suffering from the modern disease of neurosis. We witness Alvy's paranoia, anxiety attacks and New York based agoraphobia. For example, the first flash-back memory (although he previously claimed that he "was basically a happy kid") shows Alvy at the doctors, worrying because Brooklyn is expanding. The doctor laughingly tells Alvy that he needn't worry about that for years, and that he should concentrate on being happy, but neither the child nor the adult Alvy seems capable of heeding the doctor's advice, and the adult Alvy has been in analysis for fifteen years. Alvy interprets a comment made by a friend asking him what he ate as anti-Semitic - "what do you eat? Jew eat?" When faced with a television appearance in LA, he becomes nauseous. And, of course, he has an absolute terror of ever being asked to leave New York. When he suggests a weekend away to Annie to celebrate her birthday, they only get as far as Brooklyn, where they visit Alvy's childhood home. However willing Alvy may be to travel back in time and recall his memories, such spatial freedom is clearly lacking in his life. Indeed, Alvy is shown to us in cramped bathrooms, apartments and cars.