Chapter II. Second Week: Sessions 7-12 The Developmental Role of the Thirst for Knowledge

This second week is a marvellous week of analysis. I said the first week was like the opening of a Chekhov play with all the characters and the stage setting, Mrs Klein introducing her concepts and her language, and Richard being charming and getting frightened. Mrs Klein was in a hurry and unused to this setting, not knowing how to operate it. But the second week is entirely different, she hardly puts a foot wrong and things move on in the most astonishing way. If the first week sets the stage, the second week really introduces the drama and produces the first real formulation. I will try to describe it in phenomenological terms.

Richard's modes of representation become evident; the geography for instance. It becomes quite clear that the inside of the playroom is generally a very ‘inside the mother's body’ situation and that he has a tendency to escape to the outside to look at the hills. The exception to this is when he looks out of the window, which often seems to have the meaning of being outside looking in, and then he sees the children and the horse and so on. It is a common phenomenon with younger children. If you wear glasses, the child might come and look into you in the same way. Thus the geography of Richard's phantasy begins to come clear, inside and outside of objects. In the last session another type of geography closely related to conscious and unconscious is suggested. It is represented in the drawing of the ocean with the ship on top and the starfish and submarine and so on underneath. Mrs Klein suggests to him that this represents his desire to split these two levels. The division in the geography, of inside and outside in relation to the object, is thus paralleled by the geography of internal and external world in relation to himself. Likewise his splitting of the self begins to be evident. At least three divisions in his personality are fairly distinct; there is a really nasty, rather fascist and primarily oral sadistic part that bites his cap whe