Eighth Session

Richard was very worried about the children passing the house, but said he felt protected by Mrs K. He had nearly bumped into a boy at the corner of the road—the boy looked very unfriendly. Richard had also hurt his leg on the way to Mrs K. and it bled a little. He seemed continually on the alert and very tense, watching the road. He showed Mrs K. a horse's head at the turning of the road. (A horse and cart were standing there but the horse's body was hidden.) Richard looked again and again at this head and seemed frightened of it; from time to time he turned his attention to the map on the wall. He asked Mrs K. which country they could talk about. How very small Portugal was. He again looked at the map upside-down. He would like the shape of Europe if Turkey and Russia were not there. They seemed so ‘out of place’; they ‘bulged out’ and were too big. Also they were so uncertain; one did not know what they were going to do, particularly Russia.

Mrs K. interpreted the bulging Turkey, the horse's head at the turn of the road, and the hostile boy whom he also met at a corner, as standing for Daddy's frightening big genital inside Mummy. Yesterday he had referred to the map as a woman's body, mentioning his father's joke about the attack on the breast leading to the attack on the legs. In that way Daddy was dangerous to Mummy in sexual relations; he was attacking her. When they were together, muddled up, not proper—which meant that Mummy was mixed up with Daddy's genital—he also could not be sure whether Mummy would remain friendly towards himself or would join up with Daddy against him. This was expressed by uncertain Russia.

Richard tried to find out where Mrs K.'s head would be on the map. He had clearly accepted her interpretation about the map representing her body and his mother's. He suddenly wondered where he had put his cap, found it on a shelf, and held it tight. He asked if he could look at the clock, opened it and made the alarm go. Whe