A patient confronted with examination for a driver's license reacted with paralyzing and self-defeating anxiety reactions. Symptomatic acts such as cutting his finger appeared in his behavior. During this period associations brought up various Oedipal difficulties and castration fears evoked by the examining officer. The patient reflected that all of this had something to do with becoming a man. Weiner

points out that the patient was reacting to the examination as if it were a puberty rite with ritualistic physical and psychological ordeals leading to a sort of rebirth with social rewards and privileges upon satisfactory completion. Working through some of the aggressive and homosexual conflicts which had become focused on the examination made it possible for the patient to view it more realistically and enabled him to pass without further difficulty.