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"LIFE! It's a game and I know all the rules. Whether I win or lose, I don't give a damn. Let's say I find life amusing." Listening to this patient I was struck by his dry, serious tone of voice, his stiff carriage, and the expression on his face, tight with anxiety, and showing no trace of the amusement that life supposedly brought him. Why such a denial of life's importance, and indeed of his own? There was something distinctly defiant about his statements but to whom were they directed, and why? Looking back on this first meeting with Professor K., I can now answer that question in part. His idea that life was a game which he knew how to play, even if he did not get much out of it, was a desperate attempt to give some meaning to his life. We were to discover subsequently that he felt it had none, that the necessary sign posts were missing, and that he often wished he could put an end to his miserable game. But there was no way out of his compulsive existence. In a sense he was saying,
I have to live my life as though it were a futile game otherwise I shall not be allowed to go on living.
Towards the end of this first interview he replied,
You ask what would happen if I should take myself seriously. Let's suppose I really finished this book I've pretended to work on for years—well, I feel I would be taking a senseless risk. It sounds crazy, but if the book were a success that would be the end of everything.
The paradoxical answer to fulfilling his life goals was of the order of castration, aphanasis, and death. Having decided he was only