The patient often dramatizes by symbolically acting out unconscious fantasies based on all types of situations experienced since birth. The author describes 'the terrible mother' and the father who feels himself anchored by a ball and chain. His efforts to resolve his anxiety over his inability to produce a child may lead to the fantasy that 'the child is stolen' or 'is bought' or to the couvade. The child's role is influenced by Oedipal conflicts and ideas of transformation similar to 'the myth of the birth of the hero'. Accompanying his feelings of guilt and oral fear is the wish to incorporate not only by mouth but also by means of other regions of the body, particularly the hands. The myth is also important as a means of displacement from vagina to mouth.