Twenty-Seventh Session

Richard looked frightened and worried. It was raining (which always depressed him), and while putting his raincoat down to dry he expressed his dislike of the rain. Then he murmured ‘drowned rat’, but quickly put out the fleet and was unwilling to say what he meant. (This way of murmuring a few words and then quickly trying to change the subject had by then turned out to mean that he could not help expressing something important and yet wished to deny it.)

Mrs K. drew his attention to what this behaviour meant and reminded him of his feelings when the Hood was blown up (Twenty-fifth Session). The sailors had been calling out ‘Richard, Richard, Richard,’ and he had also been murmuring in the same way then.

Richard said that he knew this. They were calling him to save them. But even if he had been there, he could have saved only a few of them. Or could he have saved any? … At the same time he was ‘on guard’ against the children outside. He also mentioned that he had met some children as he came along and had been afraid of them.

Mrs K. interpreted his desire to attack the babies inside Mummy and to blow her up with his ‘big job’, and reminded him of yesterday's blackened circle and the brown section of the empire representing himself. The sailors then stood for the babies inside Mummy whom he would drown with urine. But at the same time he wished to save them and despaired of his capacity to do so because he could not control his hate (Note I). He was also afraid