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216 loving. He loved best to play killing chickens. “The slaughtering of poultry was quite a festival for him. He could dance around the animals’ bodies for hours at a time in a state of intense excitement.” But then he kissed and stroked the slaughtered animal, and cleaned and caressed the chicken effigies which he himself had ill-used.

Arpád himself saw to it that the meaning of his curious activity could not remain hidden. At times he translated his wishes from the totemic method of expression back into that of everyday life. “Now I am small, now I am a chicken. When I get bigger I shall be a fowl. When I am bigger still, I shall be a cock.” On another occasion he suddenly expressed the wish to eat a “potted mother,” (by analogy, potted fowl). He was very free with open threats of castration against others, just as he himself had received them on account of onanistic preoccupation with his penis.

According to Ferenczi there was no doubt as to the source of his interest in the activities of the chicken yard: “The continual sexual activity between cock and hen, the laying of eggs and the creeping out of the young brood” satisfied his sexual curiosity which really was directed towards human family life. His object wishes