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A few years ago a young woman came into treatment who, among other complaints, manifested feelings of anxious agitation and restlessness. This agitation particularly expressed itself in vocational instability, in a constant search for new surroundings and new people to work with.
As treatment progressed it became apparent that her anxiety stemmed from a constant state of sexual excitation, the cause of which could be traced back to childhood episodes during which the patient hid under her parents' bed while they had intercourse. These childhood experiences left her with overstimulated sexual feelings, dominated by a strong wish to identify with her father and to have intercourse with her mother. It appeared that her vocational shiftiness resulted from the wish to meet and have sexual relations with as many men as possible in order to detect the one with the most powerful sex organ which she then—as her unconscious fantasy ran—could retain inside of her as the result of coitus.
It seems surprising that this unconscious wish is expressed in the patient's first Rorschach record which was taken before treatment began and long before she herself had gained any awareness of her unconscious conflicts. In the following we shall quote a number of responses reflecting the patient's wish to retain the penis inside the vagina:
“This could be a grotto, a cave, a few feet deep, no further; and this is the stuff they'll fix inside the grotto, ornamental stuff, like an upside down vase. The grotto ought to be illuminated at night, so this is the light-fixture, a bulb, which they placed there, it has a little metal piece at the end.”
Or also:
“This could be an Indian with dark hair, standing straight up, just inside the entrance of a cave.”
One glance at the shape of the “Indian”, the “upside down vase”, or the “light bulb” on the cards suffices to suggest the shape of the penis which should be brought into the “cave” or “grotto”.
The “dark hair” refers to the pubic hair which was of parti