Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/4

 remained standing awhile and stared at me with protruding throat and eyes widely dilated. He gave the impression of one demented; long after, I was able to find the explanation of this evanescent 'symptomatic act', which I shall take up at its proper place in the record. Some days later he introduced a fresh and quite unambiguous symptomatic act, which allowed the first insight into his unconscious mental life: he rose from the couch, made an awkward turning movement, and fell back again flat on his face with his legs dangling. This indirect expression of his passive homosexual attitude towards the doctor he attributed to a sudden fainting fit. Its intensity and the form it took at so early a stage of the analysis had its own particular significance. The same attitude also found expression in the dreams of this introductory period. Once he dreamed of a fight with a lion that bit him in the left shoulder; and again, he was quarrelling with a younger brother who wanted to shoot him down. In a third dream he was trying to enter the royal train (it was a few weeks after the revolution) but was surrounded by soldiers who threatened him with a dreadful punishment which they did not name. Lastly he dreamed a scene from his military training, in which a superior dug him in the ribs in fun. Most important in all these dreams, which succeeded one another as it were according to programme and undisguisedly represented the passive homosexuality of the dreamer, was the progressive demolition of the unconscious phantasies underlying them. The reaction which at first took so violent, almost archaic-mythical, a form of expression, became finally transformed into slight facetiousness. Very little material actually recollected was however gleaned from these dreams. Here, as in the case of the symptomatic act, the patient seemed at once to admit all and to conceal all. As before he maintained reserve with respect to the demands of analysis, and was little inclined to communicate his thoughts freely. It could not well be a question of resistance nor of misunderstanding in regard to the treatment, for he had already accommodated himself to the guiding rules of analysis in accordance with the complex of his unconscious constellation. I can now only refer to his behaviour as somewhat 'close', but I shall go into this more fully later.

The transition to a gentler and at once more rational transference was accomplished by a new series of dreams, which according to their content belonged to the well-known type of