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The extreme fluidity and kaleidoscopic variability of the primary processes are now so familiar to analysts that there is no longer the surprised delight which years ago attended the discovery of a new or unusual form of symbolic representation. Occasionally, however, there appears in analytic material a symbolization of such nature and succinctness that it still deserves a short paragraph in our already voluminous literature.
An excellent young man, in the midst of working through his Oedipal and sibling rivalries, dreamed of a motor boat which, though small and inexpensive, had a very large exhaust pipe standing vertically amidships next to the wheel. The associations were to other larger, more powerful, fancier craft which the patient envied, and to confessions of feelings of weakness and inadequacy compared with other men—father and brother figures. The consolation in the dream was the huge, vertical exhaust pipe. Associations to this evoked feelings and memories concerning the size of his phallus as a representation of power and potency. This led to his anal potency expressed in sound and power of expelling flatus, as compared years ago with that of other little boys.1 The patient continued, 'As a small boy I felt that my penis was not powerful enough, but would be much more so if I could only pass my bowel movements through it instead of only urine'.
The clarity of this support of Freud's remarks about the cloaca in the symbolic fusion of rectum and urethra, and the representation in the dream of potency as flatus seem worthy of note.