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A young man began his analysis with concern about the use of the couch. He approached it cautiously, complaining a bit about the loss of the face-to-face confrontation. He had imagined a potential value to the analyst's facial expression, as a signal of the directions that he might best pursue. He anticipated difficulties in the absence of such signals.
After a few days he felt more reassured. The setting proved tolerable after all, but a new concern developed about his capacity to control his feelings. He recounted manipulating mathematical formulas or playing mental arithmetical games as a frequent aid to falling asleep or while negotiating some other trying period. An interpretation was made concerning his need to feel in control as a reassurance against intense feelings and the use of his organizing skills as an expression of that control.
His confirmation and elaboration appeared clearly a day or two later when, after a moment of silence, he complained about the ceiling tiles in the office. He remarked with some laughter that they were driving him crazy. From the time he had started with the couch, he explained, he had periodically had his attention drawn above. He partially accounted for his interest by his line of work, which, in fact, was related. Several ideas had occurred to him about those tiles. To begin with, it was possible to develop nearly an infinite series of groupings and patterns; he recalled his childhood interest in the "infinite." Secondly, he had become intrigued with the question of whether the first row of tiles was "complete" or whether the tiles had been slightly trimmed at the edge to fit into the proscribed space. This concern about "intactness" challenged him. At the moment when he finally brought his attention to the ceiling tiles into the analysis, he had been establishing a