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.
ON the first day back from the holiday (2 January 1958) she begins by saying how well I look—-what a change in only ten days; perhaps I have a lover? But now she moans, as so often, ‘If only she attracted men!’ While talking she is drawing what she calls ‘A disembodied bird’ (Fig. 108); and now she tells me how nasty she is to any man she cares for who does not return her love. To me the disembodied bird suggests belching and exploding flatus, but I do not say no, and she goes on to draw a profile face with a monstrous growth on its nose; I feel she does here realize what a monstrous distortion of her potentiality for true human feeling this head-in-air disdainful pride brings, this scorning of her smelly baby self's relation to me.
I do not think I talked to her here about her rivalry over creativeness, especially with men, in the specific terms of feeling that her flatus, the invisible air from her bottom, is equated both with semen and with the spirit that inspires and fertilizes, but I feel it has to be taken into account.