The patient's unconscious identification with Pinocchio was revealed in many ways. Even in his posture, he had a 'wooden' quality, like Pinocchio. Pinocchio's subservience to the pleasure principle, and his constantly disappointing his parents, indicate that he symbolizes the penis and masturbation. In acting out the role of Pinocchio, the patient indulged in forbidden pleasure and evaded the superego; Anna Freud has commented that the pregenital masturbation fantasies of each libidinal stage are compressed into 'one single image or fantasy'