The Number 13 as a Castration Fantasy

The number 13 has traditionally borne an evil connotation in folklore and religion. The analysis of a patient revealed that this number represented an unconscious threat of castration. The patient was free from overt neurotic symptoms until his two-year-old son, for whom he was caring at the time, fell and injured his head. An operation scheduled for the thirteenth day of the month resulted in the child's death. Meeting the father a year later, the child's physician stated that he would never again schedule an operation for the thirteenth day of the month.

After this conversation any reference to the number 13 roused in the patient an obsessive fear of impending danger. For example, if he perceived that 13 was the sum of several smaller numbers, or that a larger number was divisible by 13, he became disturbed and often remained so for days or weeks. The reason he gave for the obsessive thinking and his emotional distress was his belief that the number reactivated his grief over the death of his son. As an example of his reaction, one day in his office building a man asked to be directed to room 728. The question caused him immediate distress, for he perceived that 728 is divisible by 13. It did not, however, occur to him that he knew 728 to be the number of the office of a good friend, a woman who had figured in his sexual fantasies. Guilt over these fantasies played a prominent role in the development of his obsessional neurosis. On another occasion when asked the meaning of the word 'Oris', he said he did not know but immediately became upset. Upon looking up the word, he learned that Oris is an asteroid which was discovered on the thirteenth day of the month. He could not explain how he might have known this fact. Another