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During the following days, the theme of eating develops. Thus, on Thursday 4 December 1958, she tells me that when trying to release her jaw and the back of her neck she felt as if she had had a little fit in her mouth, and then adds that she has been cooking brains for the family but could not bear to eat them herself. Here I think she is telling me that there are difficulties in taking in from me, because to get good interpretations from me means, for her, eating my brains.
Also in this session, she tells me she has had a dream:
There is a painting of a cornfield half of which is covered with corn-stooks, the other half a bare ploughed field.
She now says she wants to go to painting classes.
Here I point out how the dream painting of the corn-stooks beside the ploughed field does seem to denote a growing belief in the rhythm of growth, a fertility cycle, a belief in a phase of winter and apparently empty fields if there is also to be a time of harvest.
On the next day, Friday 5 December, she begins by saying she feels giddy, and then tells another dream:
In it she said to someone that she would never put dirty milk-bottles out.
I thought of this as suggesting that she is getting nearer the idea of being able to value the empty breast, not having to spurn it, neglect it, leave it dirty after she has used up what was in it; in fact, going in the direction of recovering the capacity to value the giver as well as what is given, and to take responsibility for restoring it after her use of it.
Soon she brings in the theme of sorrow for loss, by beginning to quote Byron's poem: