The re-enactment of a fantasy of being pregnant by a male patient was a most complete and dramatic expression of his identification with his mother. For him a woman's supreme claim to womanhood was in her possession of a baby, which he too sought to acquire. His pregnancy was also a symbolic castration, the price he must pay to be loved by the father. Lastly, the pregnancy was the culmination of a cycle of events which had its inception in the psychic trauma of the primal scene. In accordance with a tendency to reversal which, as Freud pointed out, is a marked feature in the analysis of hysterical attacks, the action of the drama was played in reverse.