Sixty-Seventh Session

Richard, although a few minutes late, entered the house without hurry, looking depressed and reserved. He put down his attaché case but did not take the fleet out and walked about the room, kicking the stools and stamping on one or two. He did not look either at Mrs K. or at the clock. Altogether he appeared very disgruntled and uncertain what to do. When he noticed a big moth (the same kind as some days before) he first tried to chase it out, then decided to leave it alone. He also kept on tying up his shoelaces to make them quite tight.… After a while he asked whether he had been late, and how many minutes late.

Mrs K. said it was two or three minutes.

Richard asked if Mrs K. would keep him those two minutes longer.

Mrs K. interpreted that the two minutes seemed to stand for her breasts, which Richard was afraid of losing because he was deserting her by going home for the night.

Richard livened up a little and said: ‘You are very clever to find this out.…’ He had been looking out of the window, then sat down at the table and, stretching out his hand in an appealing way, asked Mrs K. to pass him the pad. He began by sucking the pencil. Then he wrote down a line of ‘ice’, again and again repeating the word with no space between and said with growing intensity: ‘Ice, ice, ice.’ Then he made Drawing 58. First it seemed as if he were going to do something like the ‘Chinese protest’ (Sixty-fifth Session). When Mrs K. asked him whether this was Chinese, Richard at first thought it was; but then he decided that these were scratches on the ice and that some of the darker dots and lines were people on the ice-rink who were scratching the ice while skating.

Mrs K. interpreted that his wish for lots of ice-cream was bound up with his need to get all he could, and even more, out of Mrs K. The ice-rink stood for Mrs K.'s (Mummy's) inside where the good milk and the babies and the good genital of the father were to be found. But if he were to intrude in