Response by Beryl Sandford

I would like to thank the discussants for their appreciative and interesting comments.

Dr. Morgan is correct about the dream material—it was rare and of a primitive type, mainly concerned with bodily sensations which terrified the patient and had a nightmarish quality. I do not seem to have made myself clear as Dr. Morgan suggests that I have “the prejudices of a dog lover or ignorance of cat behavior”! When I say that cats are not very dependent on their masters what I really mean is that cats do not accept us as their “masters” in the way that dogs so readily do. One might say that one does not own a cat—the cat shares one's home. I would only agree that “cats will perform their roles in obedience to the master's unconscious demands” if it is expressed as follows: “Cats will perform their roles in response to their companion's unconscious demands.”

A cat will only come on one's knee if he decides this for himself and this was characteristic of Elsie; any attempt on my part to, as it were, take her on my knee would have been repulsed. Availability was the keynote of the situation. This is opposite to the behavior of a patient whom I might well call my “dog-girl” (she once owned three dogs and fourteen puppies). This girl was forever trying to force me to satisfy her demands in a very desperate and pathetic attempt to control me completely. Elsie, on the contrary, was extremely undemanding, which I think arose from her having coped with early deprivations by the mechanism of “denial of the need.”

Dr. Rosow asks why I played the “May I give you an interpretation game?” knowing this was not sufficient. At the beginning of her

analysis, although I realized a special framework was necessary, I could not at first know the best way to handle the situation. The “interpretation game” was a stepping-stone and did, as I pointed out, enable Elsie to accept many interpretations until the death of Spooty produced a crisis calling for different handling. The tea parties arose fro