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The unfolding of an unconscious Pinocchio fantasy in the analysis of a long-standing obsessive-compulsive neurosis proved to be crucial for the understanding of both the neurosis and the patient's character structure. Pinocchio (1), a wooden puppet fashioned without ears and with a remarkable nose (it grows whenever he tells a lie) is a delightfully naughty and disrespectful boy. He aspires to be a real live boy, a gentleman. Temptation overrides his good intentions as well as the warnings of the wise talking cricket and leads him into a series of misadventures. However, he always redeems himself through noble deeds or is rescued by the good fairy. He causes his sacrificing 'parents' much misery, but finally is industrious and responsible. Then the fairy godmother rewards him—he becomes a real boy. The patient's Pinocchio-like characteristics were not immediately evident to the analyst: his manner was stiff and boyish (he was 29), his clothes threadbare but in good taste—like an impoverished gentleman—and his features marred by the congenital absence of the right ear (with a vestigial pinna) which he usually protected from the observer's view.
Obsessive concerns first dominated his life when he was 16, a junior in high school (1936). He had inadvertently looked at a paper of a student next to him during a mathematics examination; later he thought he had obtained the correct answer from his neighbour and had therefore cheated. He felt quite guilty about his 'dishonesty' and had the urge to confess. One part of himself was quite certain he had cheated, but another raised a doubt—so he did nothing about it. But the obsessive rumination grew as time went on, and with it increased guilt and discomfort because the amount of restitution he demanded of himself became progressively greater. He should, he argued, repeat the examination, later the course, a year later return his high school diploma, a year later drop out of college. After two years of struggle—at