The Importance of Words in Early Analysis (1927)

I pointed out in my papers and lectures that the child differs in its mode of expression from the adult by the fact that it acts and dramatizes its thoughts and phantasies. But that does not mean that the word is not of great importance in so far as the child commands it. I will give an example. A little boy of five with very great repression about his phantasies has already gone through a certain part of analysis. He has brought forward a lot of material mostly through play, but he shows the tendency not to realize this. One morning he asked me to play shop and that I should be the one who sells. Now I used a technical measure which is important for the small child who is often not prepared to tell his associations. I asked him who I should be, a lady or a gentleman, as he would have to speak my name on coming into the shop. He told me I was to be ‘Mr Cookey-Caker’, and we found very soon that he meant someone who cooks cakes. I had to sell engines, which represented for him the new penis. He called himself ‘Mr Kicker’, which he quickly realized as kicking somebody. I asked him where Mr Cookey-Caker had gone. He answered: ‘He has gone away somewhere.’ He soon realized that Mr Cookey-Caker had been killed by his kicking him. ‘Cooking cakes’ represented for him making children in an oral and anal way. He realized after this interpretation his aggression against his father and this phantasy opened the way to others in which the person he was fighting against was always Mr Cookey-Caker. The word ‘Cookey-Caker’ is the bridge to reality which the child avoids as long as he brings forth his phantasies only by playing. It always means progress when the child has to acknowledge the reality of the objects through his own words.