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The cartoon, published in the Daily Mail, September 22, 1947, is a comment on the position of the mandatory power in Palestine. It depicts a gourd-shaped container out of whose neck projects the head of a British solider and within whose body are a Jew and an Arab facing each other with teeth bared, one holding a revolver and the other a knife. The soldier's face is congested and anxious both from the constriction around his chest and the pressure from the inner contents, which pressure is indicated by the steam escaping from the neck.
The cartoon was handed to me by a man of forty-two years, three weeks after he had started analysis, in October, 1947, with the words 'This is a picture of me. I am the soldier and this is what is going on inside me.' I was so struck by the appositeness of this communication in respect of his symptoms and object relations, and the reference it contained both to his unconscious phantasies and to an incident in his early life, that I considered it a suitable means of presenting some of this patient's problems.
The analytic material used to elucidate the significance of the cartoon has been derived from associations spread over seven months interspersed with material from other sources, for the patient has many other means of expressing his difficulties, indeed, it may be said that his capacity for introjecting other people's ideas