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Combined psychoanalysis and remedial education on an inpatient basis gave Bryant an unusual opportunity for a detailed study of a severe reading disability in a twelve-year-old boy. His learning difficulties appeared to derive from an incapacity to associate, integrate, and retain symbols from visual representation, and from an inconsistency and uncertainty in associating sounds with phonic elements. There was often difficulty in forming and remembering sounds. Reversals and letter substitutions were frequent with inability to analyze words, often confabulating or guessing at them from limited cues. An organic component was suggested since the alexia was out of proportion to other defects and because of motor clumsiness.
The patient had remained in an infantile relationship with his mother and no adequate relationship with his father had ever developed. Reading improvement came at the end of the third year after successful analysis of his Oedipal wishes and an improved relationship with his father, an avid reader. Anal retentiveness, stubbornness, and refusal to produce were prominent in phases of analysis carried over to the learning situation. Vengeful aspects were involved in his unwillingness to grant success to his parents and analyst. Included in fear of competing with father was fear of success and castration anxiety combined with fear of failure and genital humiliation. After five years, termination involved final separation