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When the patient talks about blood, I know what it means and I can produce plenty of associations, but the patient produces none. So I can either let an association of his pass without proper interpretation, and so feel an opportunity is lost, or I can use my own associations and give an interpretation that, in my giving of it, makes me abandon my position as an analyst and become a participant in his game – a game played according to rules of which I am not aware. But I do this if I do not give an interpretation.
From this point of view it might be put thus:
P: Blood. Now it's your turn to play.
A: (silent)
P: (to himself) What! Doesn't know what blood is? He must be mad.
A: Blood is your common sense which you feel is seeping away.
P: Yes. (And then follow more remarks which are in fact not comprehensible to me, but are to him because they are part of a game which only he understands. This game is a sexual one – sexual, that is, in the eyes of someone.)