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For many years I have been on friendly terms with a certain couple who often ask my advice about their affairs. I had long recognized, privately, that the wife was a case of pseudologia phantastica. On one occasion the husband came to consult me about what he considered to be a rather serious situation that his wife had told him about. I soon saw that the situation she had described had no reality outside her imagination; the whole story was simply one of her fabrications. The husband, however, had not even questioned the truth of her narrative, and I realized that in order to prevent their getting into trouble I must accept the unpleasant task of telling him that his wife was a pathological liar and that her reports of the supposed situation were merely a manifestation of this morbid tendency. He was evidently considerably shocked by what I told him, but saw at once that I was right.
A week or so later I happened to meet his wife, who, of course, knew nothing of my conversation with her husband. After a few minutes' talk she said, 'Oh, I want to tell you something about John that I think would interest you. For a few days recently he couldn't write my name correctly! Every time he tried to write it—as, for instance, in making out a check to me—he'd leave out the "c".'
The wife's name is Alice. He had written 'Alie' (A-lie).
In the first few days of an analysis a young female patient dreamed that a cat was repeatedly biting her finger. She tried desperately to make him stop, but without avail.
After a few minutes she herself discovered the significance of the dream. The pussy injuring the finger really represents the finger injuring