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It is rather a beautiful week, influenced on the outside by Mrs Klein meeting Richard's mother and his anxiety about the kind of school she would recommend. Also the question of plans for the possible continuation of the analysis are in the air. His suspicions and anxieties about these issues more or less dominate the first two sessions. Richard's father's illness casts an influence which threads through the week and there is also the problem about staying with the Wilsons which he does not like. He finds Mr Wilson much more authoritarian than he is accustomed to; he is used to being treated as an only child, nor stinted of sweets. The Wilsons are a more disciplined family than his own. He finally begs Mrs Klein and his mother to make other arrangements for him, which they do. He is also jealous of John, who is with Mrs Klein in analysis and is older, about fifteen. He probably feels rather pushed aside when John will not take him for a walk with a friend, or will not climb a mountain with him. Then there is a big disturbance in the setting on Friday, when Mrs Klein brings the oranges which absolutely drives Richard wild with jealousy.
But in spite of these external factors disturbing the situation, the main themes that have developed through the week are coherent in a very impressive way. Mrs Klein is seen working in top gear and in several places pulls things together very definitively. Finally in the Saturday session she reaches her most advanced formulation of his psycho-pathology by means of the ‘baby-tank’ material and the killing of the flies.
It is instructive to tease out the themes and to see how they orient themselves to the different kinds of material. He is playing a lot with the toys again this week, especially in the first three sessions, centering on the problem of the disasters. They mainly take the form of the two trains competing, representing himself and his father in competition for the position of the leader, the husband in the family, and, in pa