An Obsessional Man's Need to be 'Kept'

The patient about whom I am writing, and whom I will call Mr. A, seemed, at the beginning of his analysis four years ago, to suffer from practically every known neurotic symptom. And, since he produced analytic material as lavishly as he produced symptoms, I have had some ado to condense this paper to a reasonable length and, at the same time, make it comprehensible.

He is a typical obsessional with marked paranoid and agoraphobic features, and with a neurosis of such long standing that it gives the impression of having become part of his total personality. In this paper I am going to discuss one particular aspect of his case, and that is his need to be 'kept'. This does not mean that he cannot work; it means that he cannot work for money.

Mr. A, who is a Clinic patient, comes from a superior working class family, and is now aged forty-one. Before the war he had had three years psychotherapy, but this had to be stopped because of the outbreak of war. Mr. A was exempted from all forms of National Service because of his mental illness.

He is a fine figure of a man, about six foot tall and broad in proportion. His hair is black and brilliantined. He has a magnificent speaking voice, and used to lie on the couch declaiming flamboyantly as though acting in Victorian melodrama.

Everything about him, both mental and physical, seemed to give the impression of being a little larger than life. He talked in rounded periods. He alluded to anyone who was hard up as being 'financially embarrassed'; if he owed someone eighteen-pence he talked of a 'pecuniary obligation'; and anyone of average intelligence was always said to have a 'brilliant intellect'.

His mother, who is still alive, was a children's nurse before she married. She appears to share many of her son's contamination fears. His father, who was a builder, died of Tb. at the beginning of the war. Mr. A is the youngest of three children—his sister and brother being twins, two years older than he is. Both, accordin