You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
During the following months she continued to produce many drawings, a few of which I have selected: for instance, on 22 September she brings a pen-and-ink drawing (Fig. 85) of a naked woman wearing a kind of winged head-dress, and, though the head is still wrapped round with a kind of veil or cowl, this now seems to extend down her neck towards the right arm, and with numbers 1 to 24 which suggest to me both a sense of something flowing and the idea of daily time. It makes me think of the flow of energy that must in fact be going into her hand when she produces those drawings that are integrated wholes, in contrast to the withdrawal of energy from her hands which she described as her first response of disgust at the feel of the clay in the clay-bin at N.I.
On 12 October, she brings another of her alternating profile drawings (Fig. 86), rather like the one I called ‘The Kiss Insect’ (Fig. 25). Here there are either two oval faces in profile with their noses pressed close together, or a whole full face with a mouth and drops of saliva, although it can also be read as buttocks emitting faeces. Alternatively, the eyes in the middle of the two ovals can be seen as the nipples of two breasts. So here I feel there is not only the identification of mouth and anus, breasts and buttocks, but also, because of the loving way in which the two profiles meet, the idea that she can give back to me, with her faeces, in return for what she gets from my ‘breasts’, and therefore perhaps feel it is safe to feel her mouth watering excitedly for ‘food’ because she does have something to give back. I feel it represents the step forward, perhaps only momentarily achieved, of reaching a belief that her faeces can be accepted as loving gifts. Thus I feel it shows some undoing of that aspect of her internal mother that permits no fantasies about her faeces; for I remember her story about how her mother-so she said-had greeted Susan's delighted claim after defaecating, ‘Look, I have done a walki