Fourteenth Session

Mrs K. had brought the toys1 and put them on the table. Richard was very interested and at once began to play. He first picked up the two little swings, put them side by side, made them swing, and then laid them down beside each other, saying: ‘They are having fun.’ He filled one truck of the train which he called the ‘goods train’ with small figures, and said ‘the children’ were off on a pleasure trip to Dover. He added a slightly larger toy woman in a pink dress, whom he at once called ‘Mummy’. (In all his subsequent play she figured as Mummy (Note I).) He said that Mummy, too, was going on the pleasure trip with the children. He added one of the bigger men, whom he called ‘the minister’ because he was wearing a hat, but soon took him out of the truck, sat him on the roof of a house, added the pink woman, and they both tumbled down. He put them by themselves in a truck facing one another and said: ‘Mummy and Daddy are making love.’ He had taken out the small figures from the first truck and put one of them in the second truck, turned towards the couple in the first one.

Mrs K. interpreted that the swings represented his parents; laying them down side by side and saying that they were having fun meant their being in bed together, and the movement of the swings indicated their sexual relations. When the pink woman (whom he called ‘Mummy) was to go away with the children on a pleasure trip, this meant that the parents should not be together. He would also allow Mrs K. to be with him and the other children (Paul, John, and so on) but not with any man who stood for Mr K. Feeling guilty and sorry about having separated the parents, Richard brought back Daddy, now represented by the ‘minister’. Then again, as with the swings, he allowed them to be together and have