Thirty-Fifth Session

Richard appeared friendly, but reserved and anxious. He told Mrs K. that he had brought the fleet again, and put it out on the table. The German battleship Prinz Eugen (which had been in the news because the British fleet was chasing it) was represented in his play by a destroyer; the other ships surrounding it represented the British. First Richard intended to have the Prinz Eugen sunk, but then took pity on the ‘brave but solitary’ ship, and it was taken prisoner by the British and steamed ‘beaten but proud’ between two British destroyers into a British port.

Mrs K. interpreted, referring to the material of the previous day (the claw taking the jack-in-the-box away, the doctor's hand performing the circumcision, and the stools tumbling down), that the Prinz Eugen represented himself, the British ships Daddy and Paul, who would attack him and injure or cut off his genital. She linked this with Richard's feeling during the circumcision that hundreds or thousands of hostile people were present. He might then have felt that he would die, and was glad to come round and find that he was still alive and that his family, who, during the operation, had seemed to be hostile and to threaten his life, were now no longer dangerous (the Prinz Eugen who was not sunk but just taken prisoner). Yet his first feeling on coming round after the operation was that he had lost his genital. Mrs K. added that he was so frightened about the Navy's actual losses and about Britain being defeated, that he did not want to be reminded of it; therefore he