Greenacre described weeping both as a defense against and as a symbolic expression of phallic-urethral drives. Three patients are described in whom urination defensively served as a symbolic expression of tears. At the beginning of the phallic phase, each of the patients had been subjected to a prolonged period of emotional deprivation following a change in personality of their mothers. During this period their profuse weeping, crying, and sobbing were coincident with overwhelming feelings of helpless rage. The trauma was repressed but fantasies of omnipotence and narcissistic self-sufficiency persisted. As adults,

they avoided close emotional involvements to prevent the possibility of a repetition of the childhood trauma. Prior to analysis, their tendencies toward depression were almost entirely masked, and the impulse to shed tears was symbolized by urinating whenever there was a real or fantasied threat of abandonment.