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The Patient was a woman of thirty-five, who came to analysis on account of an obsessional phobia, namely, that she might hurt or kill persons with whom she came into contact.
One day, while waiting to begin the analysis hour (in my absence), she took a book from the shelves. When I came in, she put back the book (the title of which I did not see) without any comment. On her arrival about four days after this episode she began at once very eager, to relate a memory which had come to mind the evening before for the first time since childhood, and seemed to spring from thinking over, on that evening, the book she had glanced at four days previously in my room. The book was a volume of poems entitled "Look! We have come through", by D. H. Lawrence, a book which she had not heard of before this occasion. On the paper wrapper of the cover was a "cubist" representation of curves and rectilineal planes, in black and white.
My patient began by telling me that on the previous evening she was sitting idly meditating, and this book came into her mind: she had not seen the contents when glancing at it in my room, merely the cover. Thinking over it, she was much interested in the Title ("Look! We have come through") which she assumed was meant in her sense of the words, namely, that some force or element striving in a human being—most likely a violent or evil force—had succeeded in emerging. She added that this was always the situation she felt in herself—some sort of evil spirit was perpetually struggling to "get through" and forcing her into her evil actions (or desires) of hurting and killing. She then went on to record that the drawing on the cover had returned to memory at the same time, but she felt no interest in it—it was meaningless
her—and she dismissed it from her mind.
Soon after this revery she went to bed, and before she fell