Question: What are your complaints?
Answer: Frequent periods of dizziness and great physical fatigue since
childhood; insomnia and loss of appetite for the last year.
Question: Describe any pharmaceutical therapy or any other therapy you may
have undergone.
Answer: I have been using cortizone ointments for severe dermatitis for many
years. This allergy broke out at age 19 when, for the first time, I decided to
and did overcome (consciously, at least) the terror I had always felt for exams.
The allergy is exacerbated when I have metal on my skin - earrings, bracelets,
necklaces and so on.
Question: What events in your life can you remember? Which of these events do
you consider important? What emotions did these important events produce in you?
Answer: I remember that at age two I asked the girl next door to play with me.
She refused. I felt that she didn't want to play with me because there was
something wrong with me. From about that age, I can remember having a feeling of
isolation. I vaguely felt that it was my lot to be left out of good things. My
experiences with other neighbourhood children made me feel that I was something
dark and evil that nobody wanted around. Thus, I was afraid to visit them to
play or to see them in the street. I became afraid of even stepping outside the
front door.
At ages six and seven I contrived certain rigid patterns for ascending and
descending the stairs in our house. The most common was two steps up and one
down or vice versa, depending on whether I was going up or down. I felt
compelled to perform the pattern perfectly till the very end every single time I
used the stairs. This compulsive behaviour drove me mad with anxiety and was
exhausting.
At age seven I suddenly began to cough. The cough was very dry, harsh and
aggravating. I felt that something was choking me and I had to get it out. But
whatever it was, it would never come out. I could never get to the bottom of the
cough. It lasted for many months.
At about that age, 7 - 8, I really began to live in a fantasy world. I
daydreamed a great deal, although I don't remember clearly about what. By age
nine, some of the fantasies had become sexual in content (see below).
At age seven, a feeling that had long been lurking in the background, became
fully conscious - never expect anything good regarding anything at all, never
get your hopes up about anything because nothing will come of it. This feeling
of hopelessness or pessimism has been with me ever since.
From 11 - 17 I spent almost all of my time on school and homework - both of
which I loathed with a passion - and rhythmical gymnastics. Gymnastics was not
just a hobby for me: I adored it and took it very seriously. I wanted to reach
the very top. I was certain, however, that I never would. Unfortunately, I had
not a shred of self-confidence. This was part of the reason why, when I turned
17, I suddenly decided to stop gymnastics - a decision which I still bitterly
regret.
I then began to eat a great deal and put on a lot of weight. My weight
exacerbated a feeling that I had long had, but which had by now become torturous
for me - the feeling that I was ugly in face and body. Other feelings which I
had long had about myself also became much stronger from this period: I realized
completely that I was an idiot, I lacked intelligence in academic matters and my
common sense was non-existent; I felt that I was an extremely bad and selfish
person and this made me feel unbearable guilt, everything I did I felt guilty
for; the fears and shyness I had felt in public places (shops, buses and so on)
since the age of about six also increased unbearably. In general, I felt I was
rubbish, a nothing.
Since very young (about four), I have so often been tortured by the fact that I
feel people around me (whether I know them or not) watch me. I feel they watch
and pass judgement on me because I'm stupid, ugly, shy, strange, awkward, some
sort of freak or whatever.
Answers on myself: There seems to be no contact between me and other people.
Almost nothing from the external world penetrates me and what little does, I am
suspicious about and have no faith in my emotional and intellectual reaction to
it. The old romanticism, the faith and hope I once had in other people and
things, has gone. In its place is deep cynicism and a question which has long
haunted me but which now becomes even more burning: "What is true? What is
real?" The answer is: "Nothing." Not even my own inner thoughts, ideas and
emotions, not even myself.
Answers on my sex: I cannot call myself a woman. When someone first called me a
woman at 21, I felt embarrassed because it was a lie. Since then, I've never
been able to consider myself a woman. I also believe that anyone who calls me a
woman doesn't know what he or she is talking about. If I ask myself what a woman
is, all I can say is that it's something that I'm not. Perhaps it's because I
feel that I haven't really grown up. I still feel a child.
As far as men are concerned, I feel aggressive towards them because they
consider women inferior. But I also feel aggressive towards women because they
are stupid. Of course I know well that men have made them so. Androcratic
society has done a 'good job' of degrading women to the miserable creatures that
they are.
Answers on my sexual activity: At age four I had an experience of sexual play
with a boy of the same age. I was with a girl, also of the same age, when he
proposed to her that they lie down on the grass and play 'grown-ups'. Since the
girl refused, he then made me the same proposition. I accepted. I felt pleasure
when he rubbed his genitals against mine. Then my girlfriend's older sister
appeared. I suddenly felt that I had been doing something very bad. I felt very
ashamed, embarrassed and afraid that she would tell my mother and father what I
had done.
At the age of nine, I began to masturbate. This continued till I was 24. The
masturbation was accompanied by sexual fantasies which only very slowly became
explicitly sexual, for example at the age of ten the fantasy concerned a naked
man and woman simply lying beside each other. (My ignorance of matters sexual,
even until last year, was appalling.)
From the onset of adolescence till 24, you could say I was very puritanical. I
absolutely excluded the idea of my having sex, the thought of it revolted me. In
fact, I did not even feel the need for it. But if anyone else - female or male -
wanted to and did make love, I could not judge them negatively, that was their
business. When I was 19, I had my first kiss on the mouth. I had never permitted
such a thing before. It was a terrible shock to me. The utter revulsion, the
terrible guilt it caused me lasted for many months. Revulsion and guilt was a
pattern to be repeated many times after that, though not always - it depended on
the man, the circumstances.
At 24 I suddenly began to feel strong sexual desires and the need to satisfy
them. This put me into a terrible dilemma, considering my fears and taboos
concerning sex. However, after some months I did make love. I felt pleasure but
also great apprehension that the man would think me a whore. I did not reach
orgasm.
As my sexual experiences increased, I found them more and more painful. The
tragedy is that while on the one hand I feel the need to satisfy my sexual
desires, on the other hand making love is hell. Whenever I feel my excitement
increasing, my body breaks into spasms. The stronger the excitement, the more
painful the spasms. Somehow I do reach orgasm with clitoral stimulation, but I
cannot when the man is in me (there the pain is too great). At orgasm, the
emotional and physical pain is unbearable.
In the meantime, in my everyday life, I have been suffering from insomnia, loss
of appetite, and emotional numbness. These began some months after my first
sexual experience and have been deteriorating since then. What caused them in
the first place, at least in part, was the negative behaviour of my sexual
partners towards me. On one occasion, when one ignored me, my body broke into
strong, lengthy and uncontrollable spasms.
Question: Do you always understand the motives of you behaviour? If not,
give a specific example.
Answer:
(a) I strive to reach perfection in everything I do but I always feel I'll fail.
Why do I need to be so perfect?
(b) On a few occasions, I have dared to express my desperate need to talk to
someone about how terrible I feel. I especially need to talk to my mother. I
want her to listen and answer with understanding and sympathy. I want her to
recognize and accept the fact that I'm in a mess. I don't understand how or why
her accepting this would help.
(c) I have reached a point of tremendous emotional control which does nothing
but eat me up. I go into long and deep depressions which are interspersed with
strong feelings of anger and aggressiveness directed I'm not sure where. I can
never really express this aggressiveness, not even when I'm alone. I know I want
to do something violent - smash something, tear something down - but I can't. So
the feelings remain inside me, sizzling and bubbling.
Question: What do you desire most in life?
Answer: I need to be free - free of my emotions, free of my self-control, free
in my thinking. I want to move, to dance freely but it seems that my mental
rigidity extends to the muscles of my body.
Question: What are your ambitions?
Answer: I have none. I have said that I'm nothing. So what ambitions can I have?
Question: What are your expectations?
Answer: I once hoped I would achieve the freedoms I mentioned some day. I know
now that I never will. If I broke out of my control to speak, what would I say?
- that I'm stupid? - that all that I say is stupid? - that what others say is an
act and/or stereotyped? I see through them and me - I see the emptiness. I
expect nothing. With no hope, no faith, no patience, with this despair and
desperation, what is the purpose of living? I just want to fade away.
Question: What do you fear most?
Answer:
(a) Life.
(b) I had always been afraid that God would punish me for being a bad person.
When I turned 17 I lost all my belief or faith in the existence of God. But
while I have openly denied the existence of God since then, within me I am
terrified that, if He does exist, He will punish me for denying Him by sending
me to hell and hell-fire.
Question: What are your other fears?
Answer: Spiders, spiders' webs, cockroaches, grasshoppers and suchlike terrify
and repulse me.
Question: Describe your recreational activities.
Answer: To relax, I must drink, and a lot. So I drink, get drunk and then I can
dance and sing freely. But then I crash down into a terrible depression.
Question: Are any of your dreams repeated in a stereotyped fashion?
Answer: I frequently have dreams about repulsive insects, especially spiders.
The spider's very presence (in the dream) is threatening. I feel terror that
whether I try to kill it or run away from it, it will strike first - it will
inevitably jump on me and inject me with its poison. I wake up shuddering.
Question: What are your feelings for your mother?
Answer: I feel that my mother worries for and helps relatives and friends who
have problems but she doesn't want to know about mine. I desperately needed to
talk to her but when I tried she didn't want to listen. I don't think I've ever
loved her.
Question: What are your feelings for your father?
Answer: I feel love and tenderness for my father although I've only just
realized that I've never tried to really talk to him. It had never entered my
head that I should or would.
Question: What are your feelings for your brother?
Answer: I love him very much.
Question: Your feelings about the interpersonal relations of you mother and
father?
Answer: My father appreciates my mother's qualities and he loves her. My mother
in one way appreciates my father's qualities, but in another way she dominates
him and looks down on him. She becomes irritated and scornful when he expresses
his feelings for her - and he does that often.
Question: Your feelings about the interpersonal relations of your mother and
brother?
Answer: I feel that my mother oppresses my brother and that makes me sad.
Question: Your feelings about the interpersonal relations of your father and
brother?
Answer: I feel that their communication is only superficial. My father is to
blame for that. He can't open up.
Question: Do you feel that you have concealed anything in answering the above
questions?
Answer: Not that I can think of.
Recapitulation of my problems: I feel like a vegetable, a strange vegetable which lives in pain.
Question: Do you have anything else to add?
Answer: Nothing.
R10's SESSIONS
R10: I remember when I was seven, I had this same cough which lasted for many
months. I was later told there was no physical basis for it. It was a nervous
cough.... I remember how everyone else's problems were always bigger and more
important than mine - at least that's what my friends showed me. They'd talk to
me for hours about their problems and I'd keep quiet about mine and let them
have their say, but this was not reciprocated. They were not prepared to listen
to me. They took advantage of me. (A sudden rush of strong feelings makes her
cry out and burst into tears.) ...
Doctor: What is it? What do you feel?
R10: ... I don't know ... I just feel it's something horrible I saw, but I don't
know what ... (crying continues) ... I have cried like this many times before
because I'd be in agony. I wanted someone to see me to know what I was going
through. But I'd always hide it. I had to. Why? I keep feeling who cares anyway?
... (sarcastic laugh) ... I laugh because I'm ludicrous ... I often get very
depressed and I used to cry a lot ... (silence) ... I can't live up to what
others and I expect of myself. I set very high intellectual standards which are
impossible to reach.
Doctor: Why should you be so clever?
R10: I don't know why. But I have always striven for it. I can't reach it. It's
like there's a solid wall around me that restricts me, a wall I can't get out of
because it's there ... (She presents strong, painful contractions of the
abdominal muscles which oblige her to curl up.) ... I want to break through that
wall.
Doctor: Who put the wall there?
R10: I suppose my mother did. (This is not said with much conviction.) ... I
have to endure these restrictions, to endure everything, just endurance, always
endurance. I'm tired of enduring ...
Doctor: Who obliges you to endure everything?
R10: I do. Because I'm always told I have no patience and have a bad temper.
Doctor: Who told you that?
R10: My parents. I have a bad temper and I explode, so I have to control it ...
(the muscular contractions reappear) ... I can't stop these convulsions. They
make me tired. Something must have happened to me, but I don't know how and
when. It's ridiculous having my legs curled up like this. I'm very restricted.
It gives me cramps. I want to stretch my legs, but I can't. The blankets
restrict me too ... (silence) ... People - my mother, relatives, friends - were
always complimenting me, telling me I was something when I knew I was nothing.
Why tell me I'm clever when I'm not? I'm tired of saying the same old rubbish. I
don't get anywhere in saying I'm not clever. It doesn't untie me. They put the
restrictions on me by telling me those things. I wasn't that person they wanted
me to be. I wasn't clever enough to be what they wanted me to be. I didn't dare
tell them because they didn't want to hear that. They helped make matters worse.
I am a perfectionist but my perfectionism stops me from being a perfectionist.
It makes me go round in circles. All that terrible studying helped me get my
degree. For my parents, that was nice. What a joke! They didn't realize what a
failure I felt. I was judged by the system That doesn't say much for me and I
was so aware of it. I can't lie like that ... Doctor, I feel such responsibility
for wasting your time. I don't like imposing myself on people because I'm afraid
they'll reject me ...
Doctor: Have you been rejected?
R10: Yes, by many people. It doesn't take much. People were always bringing up
their own problems and I have a good listening ear. But they never sensed my
need to speak. My mother didn't listen. I had so many problems, I was so mixed
up but she wouldn't accept this. She didn't see the reason for it. She just
didn't want to know, so she closed her eyes.
Concerning rejection: People don't want me around for much because I am a bad
person, bad-tempered and moody, selfish, stupid and boring. I don't like to
impose on people's time because I'm afraid they'll see how I am and will want to
get rid of me. I can't flatter myself that people really care for me as I am.
R10: I can see an enormous hawk hovering threateningly over a small, helpless
chicken embryo which is trying to run and hide from the hawk. The hawk won't
leave me alone, its shadow is always over me, its claws are outstretched,
threatening. My mother wouldn't leave me alone. She'd impose her ideas on me and
I'd listen and be affected but also frustrated because often I felt that it
wasn't the way she said it was. I saw a situation differently. I got frustrated
because I didn't dare contradict her and because I couldn't express myself
anyway. How I hate hypocrisy! Just because someone is in a position of power,
being older, stronger, bigger, the parent, he thinks he can impose on the child,
ignoring its needs, as if the child is not an individual too. My mother is an
hypocrite ... (silence) ... ... I feel you're wasting your time, Doctor. I don't
want to impose myself on others because of my insignificance in their eyes. Any
other person is more significant than I am. When I tried to talk, nobody
listened. I needed to be heard ...
R10 then sees the following image: Although the doctor remains beside me,
I imagine that he leaves the room, abandoning me, and that I get up from the
couch and quickly slam the door on him before he can close it on me. (Symbolism:
R10 rejects the doctor before he can reject her.) Almost simultaneously, I see
myself crouched alternately in a tiny cave and an egg-shell. (First momentary
revival of R10's intra-uterine life which was caused by the doctor's imaginary
rejection of her. After the Session, R10 rejected this intellectual
interpretation put forward by the doctor. Despite the fact that during the 4th,
5th, 11th and 12th Sessions R10 also relived intra-uterine rejection, after
these sessions she could not accept that the experiences were real. It was the
13th Session which permanently convinced her that her intra-uterine rejection
was a real experience.)
R10: I remember my mother telling me that she had financial difficulties before
and after her wedding. I feel that deep down she didn't really accept her
marriage, nor did she want children ... (R10 suddenly presents violent and
painful contractions of the abdominal muscles which oblige her to curl up.) ...
I feel rejected. I see a flash of a foetus in the uterus. I feel that I'm that
foetus ... (long silence) ... I feel very sensitive, everything affects me. I
feel rejection at the slightest thing, the most insignificant word, the most
insignificant event. The rejection makes me feel insignificant, rubbish. I built
a wall against this rejection, an impenetrable, strong wall of steel or
concrete. I am alone. I have a strong need to share - especially music, gym and
relationships with people. But I can't share anything because of the wall. So
everything turns in on myself. I keep going round in a vicious circle behind my
wall. I'm all alone, for and to myself.
R10: I know and feel that I wasn't meant to exist. I was meant to be a nothing, a void. This is why I feel I'm nothing, insignificant, strange and aloof, and people sense this. Every single cell in my body has and eye and a mind of its own telling me I'm nothing. My mother didn't want me, nor the sexual act which produced me. Yet I ended up being born. How I hate her for not wanting me! What a farce! She didn't want me and she got a live baby on her hands. What a cold woman. I don't remember her ever as a positive, warm force. I don't think she's ever had emotions. She has such fantastic control. She passed her great control of her emotions onto me. My self-control blocks me from expressing my feelings and communicating with people. I hated her and I hated school because education was the thing she held dear. I spent hours and hours studying because I would procrastinate. My procrastination really used to irritate her. That was my revenge on her, the only way I could punish her. I realize now that even the fact that I stopped gym was to punish her. How I hated her and how I hated her orders! But I obeyed all her orders ... I have an image of the blood circulatory systems of two persons being intertwined. The image is powerful and awesome. The blood of the one person mixes with the blood of the other. I felt a part of her. We were part of each other. I understand now very clearly why she has affected me greatly throughout my life, why I have obeyed her orders. I cannot forget such a powerful influence as that. (R10 means the intra-uterine influence.) I feel guilty when I don't obey the orders ... What a life!! Life is a farce. It stinks. Why do I live? Nothing is true. Actions and thoughts are acts. Everyone acts. This falsity of life always preoccupies me - from big-game politics to interpersonal relations ...
Doctor: You have said that your mother was a cold figure. What about your
father?
R10: What about him? There's nothing much to say1 except that he
showered me with warmth and love. But I didn't deserve such great love because I
was nothing. So I would hurt him purposely to show him I didn't deserve it. He
needed to pour love onto me because my mother was cold to him. I was his outlet.
Doctor: What sort of relationship did your mother have with your father?
R10: I can't explain Mother's relationship with Father. I can't think of the two
together. I don't want to think of the two together ... I felt my father holding
me in his arms when I was a very small baby. I felt his warmth, his tenderness,
his power, and sex vibrations that were coming out of him and flowing through
me. I became sexually aroused. But this is all wrong. It's not morally right.
He's my father. My arousal needed gratification. I feel that that's where the
masturbation stemmed from. But this was wrong also, not allowed. I always
masturbated while having the fantasy of two unknown people - unknown to me -
having sex. I feel I could never be a sex object. I am not sexy. No man would
want me ... (silence) ...
Doctor: Why?
R10: I suppose because I was not and should not have been a sex object for my
father. (After the Session, R10 explains that this was an intellectual, not
emotional, interpretation.) I've talked about my control which makes me seem
cool, aloof. But I have and have had very strong emotions. Emotions which I have
felt since I was very young I came to feel were not right and had to be
controlled. I was somehow made to feel shame or guilt for them, ludicrous ...
R10: ... I'm at home, alone in the house. I'm sitting near the top of the
stairs. I hear someone coming though the house. It's a neighbour of ours and
he's drunk. He comes up the stairs. His breathing is heavy. He sits down and
makes me caress his genitals. I feel pleasure, excitement, revulsion and shame.
I'm afraid that my parents will suddenly appear and see what I'm doing. I feel
that the compulsive acts on the stairs (mentioned in the History, p. 21) began
after this experience with the man. The shame I feel because of my desire for
the drunken man symbolizes the original shame I felt for wanting my father. I
also feel shame because I'm betraying my father ... (silence) ...
Doctor: What do the patterns on the stairs - the two up and one down -
symbolize?
R10: Two testicles and a penis ... My hand is becoming smaller. It feels like
the hand of a very small baby, very sensitive and weak. This hand is being
pulled away from something and smacked ... (She then clenches her fist so hard
that the doctor hears the squeaking noise.) ... (silence) ...
Doctor: What's happening?
R10: I'm squeezing something very hard, as hard as I can ... (silence) ...
Doctor: What's that?
R10: It's my father's penis. This is my revenge because I couldn't have it, and
it's punishment for the shame he made me feel ... (From this point on R10
resists by speaking of irrelevant matters.)
R10: ... At orgasm, I expose myself physically and emotionally. I'm exposed as
if by a flash of light where the man suddenly realizes my feelings for him and
he can then use this against me. He could dominate me absolutely and I can't
allow this because of the emotional pain he'd cause me. He'd ignore my feelings,
step on them and have me only for sex ... (silence) ...
Doctor: What are you thinking of?
R10: ... My mother was cool, calm, logical, perceptive, far-seeing, assessing
the end result of things whereas my father didn't so much. He was hot-headed and
emotional, he was guided by his emotions. My father appreciated my mother's
qualities and cared for her very much ... I have an image of them, close to each
other, looking at each other. I can see the look in my father's eyes - it's full
of devotion, adoration. I was ludicrous in my desire for him because the feeling
was only one-way. And I felt helpless because of the way he felt for my mother
and because I was too small. I would have liked to have replaced my mother in
that image, to have him look at me as he looked at her - with warmth,
tenderness, love and desire in his eyes, which would lead to making love. But to
replace her was impossible, ridiculous, and I was left feeling ludicrous in my
strong arousal which wasn't meant to be seen, but it was ... (silence) ... As a
small baby, I was caught aroused by a sudden flash of light. I was masturbating
in the darkness and suddenly the light was turned on. I felt terribly ashamed
and guilty and ridiculous because I was exposed, I thought they'd know why I was
so aroused. My mother made me feel that it was very bad to masturbate. But it
was even worse that I was masturbating out of strong desire for my father ...
Orgasm exposes my strong feelings for my father which are morally wrong, not
allowed, making me feel guilty and ludicrous. It seems that the small, weak and
sensitive hand (mentioned in Session 7) which was pulled away and slapped was
the hand that masturbated and was slapped by my mother.
I feel I am mannish in other ways too - in the way I dance various folk dances,
in the way I walk, the way I sit. I was mannish in my being domineering in my
childhood, thinking I was the only one who could do things properly and taking
over. I am mannish when I stand up for myself, I don't like to be fooled. What's
femininity? Helplessness? Prissy-prissy stuff? I can't stand those things! I
must do! act! ... I can understand why it would be nice to be a man - I'd have
someone to care for me as much as I cared for my father. By being a man I'd be
wanted, very much. (See also Session 12 where her mother wanted her to be a
boy.) ... (silence) ... Often I feel I have no feelings. I feel that I was born
cold of a cold woman, as if she gave birth to a stone, and that around this cold
stone feelings are arbitrarily added. This is a problem when confronting society
because the role of the human is to have feelings, and I feel society would
scorn me for not being human. Coldness to me means asexuality because I don't
have the feelings appropriate to either sex.
R10: In the dream I see my brother at about age one. He can walk and he has long
locks. My brother is being forced to approach a female singer. The singer is
well-known for being butch and, normally, she looks it with her mannish attire
and short cropped hair. In this dream, however, her hair is shoulder-length and
styled, she is wearing make-up and a long gown. She is trying very hard to be
charming and feminine. (The dream then becomes confused and R10 does not
remember what follows.) ...
Doctor: Do you identify with anyone in this dream?
R10: Yes, with my brother2 ...(silence) ... I feel like a man. My
chest is broad and muscley. I feel strange in the genitals - a horrible,
horrible feeling ... (She starts to resist by talking around the subject and the
Session ceases to evolve. Only towards the end does she allow the drug to take
its effect.) ... I feel strange pressures in my breasts. I remember when I was
at home I was shy of myself and couldn't look at myself naked in the mirror. It
was somehow wrong that I should have breasts, I should cover them. I vaguely
feel that it's morally wrong to have breasts. Having breasts means they'll be
touched and that means sex. They're flesh and flesh means physical contact, sex.
Having them means I'm a woman and I shouldn't be ... The pressures make me feel
that my breasts are disappearing. I'm flat-chested ... There's a split in my
feeling like a boy. First, I feel like a boy in having a flat chest. Second, ...
I don't know. This is all very confusing. I can't grasp what's going on, what it
means and why ...
R10: I remember now that my cough at seven was when my mother was pregnant with
my brother. But what were the reasons for it? ... (contractions of the abdominal
muscles begin) ... I want to smash something but I'm too weak to. I'm such a
nothing, it doesn't matter if I pursue the road to self-destruction. It's my
fate and I am my own witch. I'm not worth it as a human being. I want to turn my
back on my parents to complete my self-destruction ... I see strange patterns on
the wall. I don't want to look at them. They're somehow coming out of the wall,
threatening ... (She tries to avoid the patterns by closing her eyes. The doctor
tries to coax her to look at them.) ... I see a spider's web and now three big
spiders in it. The whole thing revolts me. The web alone terrifies me. To be
caught in it, with a spider waiting at one end to catch me - ugh! And the spider
on its own repulses me. It will inevitably attack me. Its legs are phallic
symbols which insert poison into my body ... (Again she begins to resist. Again
the doctor coaxes her to express what she sees.) ... I can see eyes in the web
looking at me ... I see geometrical patterns, intricate, but cold and
calculated. I don't like things that are cold and calculated. They coldly
calculate whatever they want ...
Doctor: Can you give an example of this?
R10: My mother discarded me, rejected me. That was calculation on her behalf.
I'm not very sure about that though ... (silence) ...
Doctor: Try and return to the period of rejection.
R10: How can I do that? I can't.
Doctor: Try, for example, by thinking about the convulsions when they appear.
What causes them?
R10: ... It must have been claustrophobic in there. I was forced to lie in a
certain position and I hated being small surrounded by something enormous which
was commanding me against my will. What was this thing against my will that I
hated so much? Why am I resisting so much when I feel that this will give me the
answer to my feelings of not being human, of nothingness, and of feeling like a
boy? My hatred was so strong but I was not able to do anything about it, being
so restricted. If I could have torn at the walls of the uterus, I would have.
This feeling is exactly like the feeling I've had all my life of wanting to
explode, to give vent to my aggressiveness, but not being able to ...
Doctor: Are you paralyzing your legs so that you won't take the foetal
position, perhaps?
R10: Yes. I was just thinking the same thing.
Doctor: Flex your legs.
R10: (As she flexes her legs, she sees a horrible image and bursts into tears.)
... Oh no! No! ... The image is of a baby curled up in the womb with big,
muscley bottom and thighs. The image is grotesque. The baby looks like a satyr.
There was supposed to be a boy in that womb. My legs, especially my thighs, feel
huge and muscley. Huge, muscley thighs surrounding a penis. I am a boy ...
(silence) ...
Doctor: Try to understand why you feel a boy.
R10: That's what I was meant to be. Every message coming into me from my mother
was telling me to be a boy. If she'd known there was a girl in there, she would
have willed me to change into a boy.
Doctor: It was an order?
R10: Yes, a very strong will. It's like the ether, it controls you and you're
helpless, can't get away from it ... (silence) ...
Doctor: Why should you worry that you're a girl and she wanted a boy?
R10: She wouldn't treat me properly if I were a girl. She'd be disappointed and
I'd be nothing in her eyes. She wouldn't treat me as a human being. Her will,
her wish, her desire was so strong for a boy, so positive for a boy, that as a
girl I was negative. I wasn't wanted as a girl at all because she wanted a boy.
I wasn't even a human being, as it was a human being - something living - that
was in the uterus, but that living being was supposed to be a boy. So I was
negative and I was nothing. I was terrified my mother would realize I was a
girl. I wasn't meant to exist, I wasn't meant to be living, so I wasn't meant to
feel. That's why in everyday life I become cold, numb, I have no feelings, I'm
non-human, I cease to exist ... (silence) ...
Doctor: You say that when you reach orgasm through clitoral stimulation, you
also become numb. What does orgasm symbolize for you?
R10: When I have an orgasm, it means that I'm female, that I'm a human being -
something that my mother doesn't want ... (long silence) ... I don't want to
speak ...
Doctor: You've said that you wanted to talk to your mother but she wouldn't
listen, she paid no attention.
R10: This is symbolic. I wanted to tell her I was a girl, not the boy she
wanted. And I couldn't talk to my father as a girl and tell him I wanted him ...
My mother was always telling me what to say, what to do, which is telling me
what to be. What a bitch!
I don't want to be my mother's child. Our relationship, with its authority,
discipline, distance and injustice, was the same as in a school. No, I don't
want that kind of relationship, I don't want her to be my mother. It's just too
incongruous. (As she says this, she feels the muscular contractions beginning
and becoming stronger and stronger. She has absolutely no control over her body.
The convulsion draw her, by sharp contractions in the ribs and belly, into the
foetal position; then sharp, jerking movements in the bottom and thighs thrust
them up and out so that she arches back. Her whole body is in pain) ... This is
like being in hell, in hell-fire ... This continuous pain is unbearable. I'm
trying to ease it by telling myself it's not so bad, but it's always there! ...
It had to be endured ... endurance ... endurance ... It's driving me crazy ...
Can't stand it ... Bitch!! ... Can't think, I'm in such agony ... And this is
how it's always been ... This pain has always been there, all those years, now.
I'm exactly the same now as I was then ... I haven't left my mother ... She's
still around me ... permeating me physically and mentally ... in every molecule.
I hate her! I could just tear her womb out, scratch it away! (She makes furious
scratching movements at the air.) ...
This pressure which is making me act like this, which is all around me, is so
big and powerful and oppressive, it's as if it's beyond human proportions ...
It's like some great, heavy, oppressive ghost or power ... I can feel it. I can
almost see it in all the air in the room ... My mother's will was a tremendous
power in itself ... I feel weak, despondent, hopeless. It's as if I'm having a
conversation with my mother: "So you're in pain? Why? So what?" "But I'm in
pain." "But you aren't a boy." So I'm not a boy and haven't the right to be in
pain. If I'd been a boy and in pain, there would have been justification to
complain and ask for sympathy. But I was a girl, so I had no right to suffer
because only boys have rights. Being a girl I was nothing, not a human being, so
it was even more illogical to say I 'suffered' because, being nothing, I
couldn't feel. An unreal situation in which a non-entity was feeling nothing.
This is why I don't deserve sympathy and why it's unrealistic to give it to me
...
It's very clear now why my mother affects me so greatly till this day. Actually,
I've never left her, I'm within her, she is still around me, through me,
permeating my mind and body, torturing me as she did then, without trace of
mercy.
R10: The aggravating cough I had when I was seven symbolized (a) a protest
against my mother being a mother, (b) an attempt to tell her I'm a girl, (c)
identification with my mother so that I could cough out the new baby in her
womb, (d) an attempt to spit out all the aggressiveness I felt towards her.
R10: (anxiety) My legs feel aroused, aroused but helpless ... (silence) ...
Doctor: Aroused sexually?
R10: Yes. Just before, I felt very aroused in the genitals. Now that arousal has
gone down to my legs ... (silence) ...
Doctor: What does arousal of the legs mean?
R10: It's a sort of tension, a tension that they want to act, to move, but they
won't ... They're not allowed to move. Something is stopping them ... (anxiety
increases, she begins to cry out) ... (silence) ...
Doctor: What is it? What do you feel?
R10: I don't know ... pain. There's such pressure in my bottom - I'm pulling it
so hard together. When I was young, I'd do the same thing - I'd hold everything
in tight to stop myself from shitting. I also remember bashing my head against
walls when I was young, trying to run through them. I feel like putting my head
through the wall now (the wall beside the couch) ... (silence) ...
Doctor: What was the purpose of trying to run through walls?
R10: To get through something ... I'm scared ... (silence) ...
Doctor: What are you afraid of?
R10: (anxiety increases) ... There's something ... a big power ... (cries) ... I
think I'm small and I think it's something big and I think I'm going to be
punished ... I'm not in the womb ... I really would like to bash my head through
the wall. (She knocks her head against the wall very hard.)
Doctor: What does the wall symbolize?
R10: My mother's womb ... (Anxiety increases strongly. The cries become screams
of absolute terror. She moves about restlessly on the couch trying to find some
way to hide from whatever it is that is causing her terror. She covers her head
with her hands screaming, "Oh no!" Finally, a vision appears before her eyes:) A
horrible creature ... I see a creature ... He's going to attack me ... He's so
ugly ... He's looming over me with a fierce look on his face ... arms
outstretched threateningly ... His face is white like a mask ... his eyes green
... hair thin and white, sticking out tattily all over his head ... He's wearing
a green robe which fades into the air ... He's a green monster ... (silence) ...
I'm afraid ...
Doctor: Afraid of what?
R10: I don't know ... I feel really cheap ... I'm aroused ... I feel like a
prostitute. I feel as if I'm dressed and painted like a prostitute ... I feel
ashamed ... Somebody aroused me sexually and I responded. Then he just abandoned
me scornfully and made me feel cheap for having the feelings I'd shown him ... I
remember my relationship with the first man I had sex with. He humiliated,
degraded me, treated me with contempt. All men treat women like that ...
(silence) ...
Doctor: Who was the first to behave this way?
R10: My bastard father ... I hate him ... He was cold towards me ... I feel very
cold towards him too, that'll show him. He plays his little game. We must all
play our little games, mustn't we. My legs hurt, they're closed so tight ...
(silence) ...
Doctor: That means?
R10: They'll never open to anybody. I can be just as cold and just as cruel as
he towards me ... I'll put a knife in my father, and mother. I hate them. I'll
do everything I can to hurt them, to make them squirm and feel pain, everything
I can ... I had a dream last night that my mother was dead (hysterical laughter)
... She looked like the green creature - her face was white, her hair white and
untidy. She wasn't dead but she looked it. She was in cobwebs and she looked
like a witch. Further away my friend and I were making love. I was terrified
that my mother would wake up and see I was making love. My friend's hair was
combed in the style of my father's. I have just realized that my friend is a
father substitute. That depresses me. I won't and don't accept it ... From the
waist down I feel like a dummy, like those plastic mannequins they have in shop
windows. Where the thighs join, there aren't any genitals. That means I'm cold,
asexual. When I hold my bottom in tight, it makes my thighs stick together. By
doing this, I make sure I keep all my desire inside, not allowing it to come
out, to be shown ... (silence) ...
Doctor: Desire for?
R10: My father. That has something to do with running through walls when I was
two ... My desire for sex makes me feel insane. The arousal makes my mind
cancerous, it makes me crazy, sick. I just don't feel as if I'm normal. After
masturbating, I felt I had cancer in the brain. My mother had told me that
people who masturbate get cancer in the brain, and I thought I had it. I really
felt I was going crazy. The cancer makes you feel aware of your guilt - guilt
because the arousal stemmed from my father ... (long silence) ... (crying) ... I
feel helpless ... and I really need comfort ... I want my father to hold my
head, to hold it and rock it. My crying is numbed, my whole body is numbed now.
I just want to sleep. I want to forget. I want to forget the feeling of sexual
desire for my father, but it doesn't work, the feeling is still there. It feels
like a volcano. I feel pressure in the genitals and there are internal pressures
which tear my emotions apart, which shake my whole body, violently. I'm like a
volcano that's never allowed to burst ... I don't recognize my father now. He's
become ugly, distorted, bigger. He fades into the ghost region. He's become the
green creature, just like my mother. My father doesn't even seem to have
genitals. But I remember that he does have genitals ... (silence) ...
Doctor: How do you remember that?
R10: I saw him. That has something to do with my trying to run through walls
when I was young ... (silence) ...
Doctor: You saw him? You saw his genitals?
R10: Yes. I walked into the bathroom while he was having a shower ... (silence)
...
Doctor: On purpose?
R10: No. I didn't think there was anyone in the bathroom ... (silence) ...
Doctor: How old were you?
R10: I was two.
Doctor: Was your mother there too?
R10: No, just my father standing up having a shower. I remember how big his
genitals seemed to me ... I can see that green monster again. The look in his
eyes, I feel it in my eyes too, that nasty, cruel look of evil intent ...
(silence) ... My father's genitals are flesh. Flesh disgusts me. It's like
they're not human. And they're conspicuous, something that can't be hidden. A
man standing naked just can't hide his genitals no matter what he does. It's
like a vulnerable point ... Now my father has become a plastic dummy without
genitals. I can see the green creature. He's small now. He's evil. He is the
penis ... (For some time, R10's words seem to have no clear emotional content.)
...
Again I see my father as a plastic dummy. Everything is so distorted, so gross.
My mother's hand is in this image now. It's as if she grabs my father's penis,
she takes it and she does what she likes with it: she squeezes it, she gets rid
of it. She controls the penis, she abuses it. Just by having it she's abusing
it, letting it go to waste. It should be me who has it. I'd know how to use it
properly - through my physical need and emotional attachment. I think that by
hanging onto the penis, it's just a way of hanging onto an emotional attachment,
because physical desire and emotional attachment go together. But the arousal
and emotional attachment I had for my father wasn't returned and so I felt the
pain of rejection. Any penis reminds me of that pain. My desire is ludicrous
because it's revealed ...Yes, I touched my father. That's why I feel cheap. I
think I put my hand on his penis, on his trousers, of course. That's forbidden
territory. To my touch it felt big, full ... Maybe my father ... I don't know. I
don't know. (angrily) I don't know ... (silence) ...
Doctor: Why do you feel upset now?
R10: Because I feel like an idiot talking about the penis all the time. How can
I say that my father had an erection? It sounds like a fantastic thing, doesn't
it? I don't know if it was fantasy or reality. When the penis is erect, it's
ready to attack, it's so agile and quick and strong. It makes me want to run
away. It hurts me. It's evil because it hurts me. It hurts me because it doesn't
have feelings ... (silence) ... My father doesn't have feelings for me ...
(There follows a long series of thoughts which give the impression that R10 is
going round in circles without reaching any conclusion - a clear indication of
resistance.) ...
... My mother caught me once when I was masturbating. I felt that she realized
my desire for my father and she punished me ferociously. But that's not the only
reason why my mother terrifies me. She's a superpower. She's the hawk. She
threatens my existence. My mother is the green womb around me. (The green womb
is associated with the green creature.) She consumes me, distorts me, dissolves
me. I disintegrate in there. I'm sick, mentally sick, warped, I mean not sane. I
don't know what I am. I lose my inner equilibrium ... (Again R10 goes round in
circles - resistance.) ...
Before orgasm I feel physical excitement and emotional pain. I try to escape
from this by not concentrating on the genital area. But when I tell myself not
to escape and I push myself to concentrate on the genital area and the
excitement, that's when I reach a point of unbearable pain, of terror for
myself. I feel I'm going to disintegrate. I feel trapped (anxiety increases) ...
I disintegrate as a person. The destruction, the distortion that comes with
orgasm is a distortion of every form of my very being. Orgasm is a threat to my
life. It's the green creature, which symbolizes anything to do with sex. Orgasm
takes me back to the womb. That's how I feel it. It means going back to the womb
because both threaten my existence ... Orgasm exposes me and also my sick
feelings to my sexual partner, the feelings of the volcano which should never be
revealed. I should never expose my physical or emotional desires.
Doctor: Does the exposure of you physical and emotional desires mean that
you're a woman and that you need sex?
R10: I don't accept that, that I'm a woman and I need sex ... (silence) ... I
can see myself aged two running up to touch my father's penis and that I'm
pushed away. He pushed me away like a fly. He made me dissolve, he made me feel
like a shit. His rejection made me feel disintegrated, just as I felt in the
womb. That's why my father is also the green creature ... And I'm the green
creature because I'm evil too. I kill my mother and father. I kill my father
because even though I'd said that I'd never open my legs to any man, I have
opened them, I have had sex. So I betrayed my father. And I kill my mother by
taking my father away from her in the form of my friend. (See dream, p.34-35)
...
When I reach orgasm with clitoral stimulation, it consumes my whole body
emotionally and physically - just like being in the womb. It's like a shattering
of my very being. My whole body shakes violently with the same convulsions I had
in the womb when I was receiving the rejecting messages from my mother. Orgasm
with penetration of the penis into my vagina - with my father's green penis -
would make me experience double rejection. That's why I can't reach orgasm when
the man is in me.
Firstly, I was resisting returning to the womb or I was already in it and
wouldn't accept it. When I felt great anxiety at the big power, I said I was not
in the womb and yet a few seconds later I said I wanted to break through the
walls of the womb. Also, the words 'power' and 'superpower' which I use in the
Sessions, always refer to the womb.
Secondly, in this Session, I spoke in detail about my sexual problem with my
father which obviously began after my birth, when I could sit, or at least try
to. The convulsions which drew me into a sitting position symbolized the
paternal rejection whereas the convulsions which draw me into the foetal
position symbolize my intra-uterine rejection.
This was the first Session in which I felt terror of the womb. The feeling that
I am a plastic dummy is a defence against my very strong (volcanic) desires for
my father which I must never reveal because he rejected me. Saying that I'm not
a woman and that I don't need sex is a defence against the inevitable paternal
rejection. As well, my mother rejected me as a female. Thus I haven't the right
to feel anything, especially sexual desires. My sexual desires make me feel
insane, sick, distorted, cancerous, both because I had already felt insane,
sick, distorted from the womb, and because my mother told me that masturbation
(sexual desire for Father) causes cancer in the brain.
Another problem concerning my sexual desires is that they make me feel cheap, a
whore, both as a result of my mother's punishing me for masturbating and my
father's abrupt rejection of my sexual approach to him. When I was two, I saw my
father in the shower. Later, I tried to touch his penis, thinking that he had an
erection. My father rejected me and this rejection was associated with my
rejection in the womb from which I tried to break out by trying to run through
walls which symbolized the walls of the womb.
Doctor: Why should you be a man and how can you be a man?
R10: ... (silence ... Instead of answering, she asks to go to the toilet.
Walking there and back becomes increasingly difficult till it is almost
impossible. Her legs are stuck hard together. The pressure in her thighs and
knees which keeps her legs together becomes enormously painful.) ... If I could
press my legs harder together I would. I absolutely have to because if I start
opening my legs, it's as if the walls of a dam break down and everything comes
out all jumbled up, there's no order in it. As I said in the last Session,
everything is a mess. It means destruction ... of me. Where am I? Where are my
pieces? They're scattered all over the place. How do I pick myself up from
there? How can I put the right pieces back into the right places? I can't.
Keeping my legs so hard together means I change sex. I can't open my legs, so it
means I'm not a female. With my legs in this position I'm in the position of a
man making love and I'm making the appropriate movements. I don't want to be a
man, not even for my mother. I'm not a man. I'm not a man! I can't talk, I can't
express what I feel, I can't do anything. I'm stuck. I'm not a man. I don't want
to be a man. I'm not a woman. I'm not a woman because I'm a man. (R10's
contradictions reveal once again her unconscious confusion concerning her sex
identity.)
Doctor: When you say you're a man, are you expressing your desire to be a
man?
R10: I am a man. I can feel it in me. It's part of me ... (silence) ...
Doctor: Is it your desire to be a man?
R10: No. It comes from my mother. Her will for me to be a man becomes part of my
thinking. How else can I feel so much that being a man is part of me when I
don't want to be a man ... (silence) ...
Doctor: Can you recollect any signs during your life of tendencies towards
male behaviour?
R10: I was very domineering. (R10 considers this trait of hers to be a sign of
active homosexual tendencies.) I believe that being domineering is a male
quality. My mother is domineering. She domineers my father. It's not my father
who wore the pants in the house, it's my mother. She's humiliated him ...
(crying) ... I identify with my mother and feel I'm a man ... (silence) ...
Doctor: What did you mean when you said that being a man is part of you?
R10: My flesh is male, my blood, my molecules. I don't feel I have a penis at
the moment, but I can feel my male molecules.
Doctor: What do you feel as a man?
R10: I feel that I'm a weak person. I'm like my father who's weak. Now I'm not
identifying with my strong mother as a man but with my weak father. I'm feeling
that my mother takes the lead role in everything. I'm seeing my father as being
passive in sex. I can see him at my mother's command. I have an image of my
mother lying on top of my father and directing the sex act. In the last Session
I saw my father's genitals as plastic, powerless, immobilized. My mother got rid
of them, in other words she castrated him. My mother is the king and queen. Both
roles are male. And I in the last Session had plastic genitals too. That means I
identify with my weak father. Now I feel I have a penis and testicles, and
they're fleshy - not plastic -, soft, weak, helpless. Oh, how humiliating!! ...
My mother has cast-iron genitals. She is imperious, imperial, the ruler. Behind
her cast-iron genitals is the womb. What do they want of me? - that I be a boy.
That's her order, the law as given by Mother. It's my mother's will, the will of
the womb which I've felt in past Sessions as some strange, strong force,
stronger than anything else. You can't bend that iron will ... (silence) ...
Doctor: You said before that if you opened your thighs, there'd be a
catastrophe.
R10: The catastrophe is if I'm female ... (silence) ...
Doctor: Is it if you're female or if you have sexual contact as a female?
R10: Sexual contact will make me female. If I don't have sexual contact, I'm
ignoring my sex, there's nothing to worry about ...
Doctor: But doesn't sexual contact also include orgasm?
R10: I'm thinking simply in terms of sexual contact without orgasm. Even that's
painful because it forces me to play the role of a female and that means
catastrophe, crumbling, disintegrating into countless pieces. Sexual contact
becomes so painful because I want to be female but I don't want to dissolve.
Sometimes when I'm making love I think, "I want, I want, I want to be female but
I can't, I can't, I can't."3 As many "wants" as I say, that's how
many "can'ts" I say.
But why do I want to be a female? Is it because I am female? No, that isn't
sufficient reason. I want to be wanted by my father as a female. I want it very
much. That's why I remained a female in many ways. My father actually saved me
from swinging towards being a man, towards active homosexuality. My mother's
will for a boy was the most powerful thing of all and my wish that my father
should want me as a female was the counterbalance that I was holding onto by a
thin thread which could have so easily snapped. Till now, it's more or less
counterbalanced my mother's will, but not quite. In past Sessions I said that I
felt there was a void under me and that what saved me from falling away into the
chaos was my father. Wanting my father kept me quite feminine, superficially at
least.
Just imagine, wouldn't my mother have an absolute shock if she had an openly
homosexual child. Serves her right, bitch! She deserves everything she gets.
It's punishment for her. I'd show her exactly what a mess she made, instead of
all the cover-ups I made, acting the opposite to what I really felt. I had to
present a good face for my mother because she's a prig, puritan, conservative, a
supporter of the status quo. She may have wanted a boy but she got a girl - so
if I look like a girl, I should act like one too. So if I started to exhibit my
homosexual traits, it would have meant immediate punishment by my mother. I
wanted to punish her, but she punished me. Who always got there first? She did.
She's always dominated and oppressed me ... I need to return to the womb as a
boy or return and become a boy in there. Only as a boy would going back not be
hell.
Doctor: To return to the uterus means to pass through her vulva and vagina
and so into the uterus?
R10: Yes, that's what I saw before - a male baby in the womb and a man making
love with the mother are exactly the same thing. I would like the male baby and
the man to be me ... (R10 then hesitantly and vaguely relates her homosexual
interests.) ... I feel that the arousal I feel for certain types of women is a
refuge to which I flee. I'm running away from feeling for my male friend so that
I can escape the danger of disintegration - because sexual contact with my
friend forces me to be female.
R10: ... My mother's womb was a blast furnace, like a furnace in a German
concentration camp that they throw bodies into. This blast furnace that contains
the fire is made of steel. It's too strong, you can't fight it. My mother is a
Nazi torturer ... Now I can see myself at the age of two. I can see my mother
with a big belly. She's telling me that she's pregnant.4 Immediately
I become the weak, helpless, half-dead foetus in the womb again5. Now
I can see the concentration camp man curled up in the foetal position. He keeps
being thrown into the fire, one time after the other. Everything in life throws
me back into the fire of the womb. I can't stand it inside the womb but I go
back because I can't stand what's outside the womb either - life. I don't want
life. It's like life is the unnatural. I keep going back to the womb because
it's the only thing I know. I also feel that it's my mother's will that I be in
the blast furnace ...
R10: ... There should not be any pulsating of my bodily organs. There should not
be any contractions of the vagina. The contractions of my vagina mean that I'm a
female and I don't want to be anything. I just want to be a neutral. I don't
want a vagina with a penis in it. I don't want pulsations of my bodily organs
which show that I'm pulsing with life, that I exist. I don't want contractions
of my vagina which show that I'm a female. And I don't want close contact. Those
three things are connected. In the womb I existed, I was a female and I had
close contact with my mother ... (silence) ... I'm a nothing. I don't have a
personality of my own. To get some sort of personality, I have to take somebody
else's. That means through my life I try on different styles, different
personalities because I don't know what myself is. When my partner reaches
orgasm, I identify very closely with him. That way, someone - myself - shows me
love and I become a man, so then my mother accepts me...(silence) The emotional
pain which comes from having the vagina excited - because excitation of the
vagina makes me feel female - comes from the womb because the same thing
happened in the womb. Can you believe that, Doctor?
Doctor: How do you feel about it?
R10: That's what I feel. The pain now comes because of the pain then, and that's
why I can't get rid of it now. Oh, I'm fed up. I don't want to think of anything
... (She goes to the toilet. When she returns:) I know I've been avoiding facing
something because I'm terrified. Can I face it now? Is it too late?
Doctor: The pharmacodynamic activity of the drug is still working fully. Try
and follow it wherever it takes you, despite your terror.
R10: Oh God! I feel as if my heart is going to stop if I face it. But I have to
face it. How do you feel when you go down those long, steep Luna Park slippery
dips? I went down one once and I really felt that my heart was going to stop.
That's how I feel now. I feel something like that when I'm approaching orgasm.
Oh, the terror of it ... Can I do it?
Doctor: You mean let yourself revive the cause of your terror?
R10: Yes.
Doctor: It's up to you. You have to decide whether you'll go through the
terror, no matter how strong it is, in order to feel its cause.
R10: ... (crying) ... I can't ... (silence) ... Maybe it's better if you leave
for a while. I don't want to be alone, really. I want you to stay because I'm
afraid and your presence is a comfort. But if you do stay, I'll feel inhibited.
So it's better if I'm alone. (The doctor leaves the room.)
This whole process continues for a long time, becoming stronger and stronger.
The groans become cries, then shouts and screams of terror and pain ... Stop!
... Stop! ... No more! ... No more! ... (speaking to the air, my mother the big
power). In desperation I beat the wall with my fists and I feel the convulsions
becoming stronger, more painful. It's as if my mother is punishing me for trying
to react to her. I see octopuses' legs and human hands, especially the fingers,
extended over me ... I call out for the doctor. The doctor enters but his
presence doesn't stop the convulsions which continue to increase in intensity. I
groan loudly from the unbearable pain of the convulsions and the pressure in my
head.
R10: (screaming with pain) ... Oh, it hurts! Bitch! ... Why doesn't it stop?
Why? ... Why doesn't it stop? ... Oh, it kills me! ... It kills me! ... Will it
stop? ... It's so-o-o painful. Ooooa ... Oh, I feel like I'm going to break in
two. Oh, my back, for God's sake, my back! She's going to break my bloody spine!
... Ooh, ooa ... No mercy, she has no mercy ... The pain has to come out! ...
(Eventually, she calms down somewhat for a little, but then:) I see the teeth,
sharp shark's teeth. The spider's web is filled with sharp teeth ... Inside ...
ooh! (extremely strong muscular contractions, cries) ... Inside the teeth ...
torture! ... The teeth are the door to hell! ... (Immediately before her eyes,
the teeth open wide revealing fire within the shark's mouth. She screams:) The
fire! The fire! No, no, no! ... (lengthy screaming of great intensity) ... The
fire's everywhere ... The fire's inside the mouth. The shark's teeth open and
you have fire! ... It's full of fire! An oven! An oven! ... You put a live
foetus into the fire and you bring out a burnt foetus! All charcoal and charred
and brown ... (sobbing) ... You put the foetus in the oven with a shovel and you
take it out when it's burnt with a shovel ... The handle of the shovel looks
like a penis. The penis propels me into the oven like a shovel ... I keep seeing
fire all the time, everywhere ... I keep living in it all my days ... The fire
is in the womb ... and with sex I return to the fire ...
R10: ... My mother wants to kill me, but unfortunately I didn't die. I feel that
she kept me alive just to torture me. She didn't want me to exist, nor did she
want my sex. She distorted me and then she deliberately gave birth to me so that
my distortion could be seen by everybody. That's unbearable. I prefer the hell
of the womb ... I feel I'm in the womb again ... I do anything and everything
you want, Mum. If you don't like sex, then neither do I. If you think that sex
is bad, then so do I. If you don't like your vagina being penetrated by a penis,
then I don't like being penetrated either ... (silence) ...
Doctor: How do you know that she doesn't like her vagina to be penetrated by
a penis?
R10: I can feel it. I know it. I can feel her reaction when her vagina has a
penis in it. The walls of her vagina become cold to it. The walls of that vagina
don't want that visitor at all. I can feel all her abhorrence at having her
vagina penetrated and her abhorrence becomes mine. Whatever happens in her
vagina, I can feel it happening in mine. Whatever she feels, I feel. I know
everything that's going on inside her. I'm the exact copy of my mother, like a
print from a negative ...(This explains why R10 could never conceive of her
mother having sexual desires) I see my mother not very far from me. I see myself
opening my arms and stretching them out to her, trying to reach her. I feel that
I want to love my mother. Loving my mother is like the situation of a slave who
is whipped and beaten by his master and loves his master. If I love my mother, I
neutralize her in a way, I try to lessen my pain and weakness by identifying
with her and getting some of her power. The womb is dominant and overpowering
and I am submissive. Being submissive means being in agony. Or do I like that? I
have to like being submissive, I have to accept it. If I like the submissiveness
and the agony, then my pain is lessened ...
Doctor: Follow the image. Don't stop it.
R10: ... No, no, I don't want to see wombs, foetuses. Why can't we just have a
pleasant chat? (giggle) - (R10 continues her resistance. Although she speaks
about the rejecting womb, it is purely intellectually. There is not a trace of
emotional element.)
R10: ... I feel I'm a white mass, very small and soft. I'm not properly formed
yet, nothing is defined. I'm given electric shocks. I feel that my mother
realized she was pregnant very, very early. That's when she began to bombard me
with her rejecting messages. I feel that after the initial assault, I didn't
develop any more. The way I feel I am reminds me of the way schizophrenic
children depict themselves. I've seen drawings of schizophrenic children. The
drawing of themselves is like a shadow or a ghost of themselves. They're not
finished and they're not formed. They don't know how to draw themselves with a
proper body, proper limbs and facial features. Their drawings remind me of the
skinny concentration camp man ...
R10: The first knowledge I ever had was of my mother's rejecting messages. It
was the knowledge of poison and evil. I'm like Eve. The devil made Eve eat the
apple. (giggle) ... Anyway, the devil is not the devil. The devil is God. God's
the devil. My mother is a god, a god in male form, of course. Nobody ever
thought that God took a female form, did they. Why didn't they? Why does God
have to be a bloody man? Why couldn't God be a woman? Because women are just
contemptible little worms ...
R10: (to the doctor) Why don't you hit me? Why don't you destroy me? I don't
have the guts to destroy myself ...
Doctor: Why should I destroy you?
R10: I'll kill her some day, I'll kill her! Bitch! Monster! ... I can see the
grotesque green face of a dragon. Its wide mouth is open and all its sharp teeth
are exposed. There's fire within the mouth ... (screaming) ... She's eating me,
she's tearing me to shreds ... (to the doctor) Please, don't let her eat me ...
(At this point, R10 obstructs the evolution of the Session.)
R10: ... I remember a scene from a movie where a woman is raped by three men. I
can see one of the men from the backside fucking the woman while the other two
hold her down ... You bastards! ... Three big strong men against a defenceless
woman ... Oh God ... I hate ... I hate ... I hate ... I just hate men! You fuck!6
... (sobbing, feeling of helplessness) ... I hate the injustice of man being
endowed with more physical strength than a woman. The woman can't fight back. He
imposes himself on her, he does whatever he likes. I identify fully with the
woman in the movie ... agony ... torture ... I hate ... Oh God, I hate ... Those
three powerful men symbolize my mother's all-powerful womb. Men with their rape
send me back to the hell of the womb7 ...(sobbing) ... I can't fight
the womb. If I give her one, she gives me a hundred. Her blows are horrifying.
They make me break down into pieces, like the bodies are in pieces all over the
place in Picasso's 'Guernica' ... I want to kill myself because I have to finish
what my mother started ...
Doctor: What is it?
R10: (screaming with terror) The womb! The womb! ... I'm on fire ... the fire
... the fire ...Do you understand, Doctor, Fire! (screaming continues) ...
Doctor: Describe what you feel.
R10: (pained crying) ... There's nothing left of me. My voice is just an echo
from something that was ... (screaming-crying) ... I'm destroyed ... burnt
destroyed ... by fire ... (screaming-crying) ...
Doctor: Where is the fire?
R10: It's everywhere ... It's the walls. Look, the walls are fire8.
Everywhere fire ... Everything I touch is burning ... (sobbing) ... That's why I
get old9 and I become distorted and deformed ... from the fire ... I
feel like I've been thrown through the ages, ages of fire ... one fire after
another ... too many fires, Doctor, too many fires ... Everyone ... Everyone
before me10 went through fire ... I walk through a sea of fire ...
and I become a fire myself ...
... I'm the most revolting monster on this earth. You stupid woman, you gave
birth to a freak! Yes my dear mother, you gave birth to a monster spider. I'm
the spider now11 ... Oh no! (She screams with horror at having become
a spider.12) ... I'm a spider. I'm revolting. Ha ha ha. I get revenge
on you, you bitch! - by being a spider13 ... Now what's happening?
Now I feel as if I'm spinning in a washing machine. I'm at my mother's mercy. I
stopped being the spider. I'm burning again ... (screaming) ... If I become a
spider, I stop burning ... (screaming) ...
Doctor: Become a spider then.
R10: (screaming) Be a spider? I'll kill! I'll Kill her!14 ... I can't
do it. I can't ... (screaming) ... I feel so nauseous. I want to vomit ...
(R10 has calmed down somewhat and says:) When I was a foetus, before the
rejecting messages came in, I was not completely calm, but tense, waiting. It's
as if I knew that something terrible was going to happen because it had happened
before. That's why I said I've been through ages of fire. As if there was a fire
before me and before that and before that; my mother a fire, my grandmother and
so on, back through the centuries. So if you have a pattern established, then
you know there's going to be another fire. The pattern is that there will be
another one and that's what you're waiting for. You're petrified waiting because
you can't avoid it. It's as if I were a fire born of a fire born of a fire and
so on. I think that's why I can't find a moment of calmness in the womb. Before
the rejecting messages come in, I'm in a certain position in the womb, the
foetal position, the same position my mother and grandmother and
great-grandmother and all the others before them were in. I know that position
and I know what it means and it can't mean good, it can't mean calm. There's
going to be a terrible shock that'll make me convulse and burn. The first time
my mother bombarded me with her rejecting messages, I felt an electric current
of tremendous voltage passing through my body ...
Doctor: As a robot, do you feel that all your movements are under someone
else's control?
R10: Yes! ... I'm a robot that's been dismantled. I'm a doll that's been thrown
into the rubbish because nobody wants me. I'm very tired. I don't want to feel.
My feelings exhaust me. My feelings are sick and the only way to get rid of them
is to die. Every molecule in my body is rotten (repeated many times). What my
mother did to me cannot be changed. She caused irreparable damage. I can't live
with a body that's rotten. It's unbearable. I have to live with it every day,
every second. I can't. Really, my mother has to take the first prize for
ultimate destruction. That's what she wanted and she accomplished her goal. I
feel I'm useless in this world, that I shouldn't be here. Why is my form, my
body in this world? Why does it take up space in this world? It's taking up
space, it shouldn't. Where I am should be a vacuum. I am a nothing and I'm
forced to drag around this body with its stupid, sick emotions. It's a burden to
be here in this world and carry all this pain, but that's what she wanted. My
mother is a universal law that distorts me. If you go against the law, the law
is so powerful it pulverizes you ...
R10: ... I can see (in an image) and feel a knife which is up in my vagina and
which is mutilating it ... (silence) ...
Doctor: Who put the knife there?
R10: ... The spider and the penis that enters my vagina when I make love ... The
penis rapes me ... I see the open mouth of the shark and webs ... I feel so
sick, so nauseous (very strong contractions of the abdominal muscles) ...
(silence) ...
Doctor: Don't avoid the image. Don't neutralize what you feel.
R10: ... I feel I'm in the shark's mouth ... She's pulverizing me, the bitch ...
(weak pained cries) ... Oh Go-o-o-o-od ... (At this point, R10 presents
uncontrollable vomiting. It is worth noting that despite very strong nausea in
all the previous Sessions, she had never vomited.) ... I'm getting pressure in
the top of my head ... I'm going through my mother's vagina ... Pressure, pain,
it's unbearable ... Why doesn't it finish? It's never-ending ... Oh Go-o-od ...
I'm cold ... Now I'm back in the womb again. (R10 again presents the usual
muscular contractions.) ... I prefer to be in the womb. It's warmer because I'm
in her, with her. I feel it's my place ... I'm going through the vagina again.
I'm upside down. I feel helpless and ludicrous because my legs have fallen apart
and my mother is examining my genitals. I feel all alone surrounded by chaos in
this world. But I felt the same thing in the womb - chaos. I was with her but I
was all alone because she didn't want me ... I don't want to become pregnant. I
don't want to become a mother. I don't want to become myself. If I become
pregnant, the foetus inside me will be rotten, just as I was in my mother's
womb. All my female ancestors were rotten embryos inside their mother's womb ...
(R10's double identification, should she become pregnant, with her mother and
the foetus within her [R10's] womb.)
R10: ... My aggravating cough symbolizes my identification with my mother. I try
to cough out what is in the womb, that is, myself. It's a vain attempt to be
free of the hell of the womb ...
R10's DESCRIPTIONS OF HER PSYCHOTICLIKE S & P16
The above leads instantly to and is then accompanied by the urgent wish to die
on the spot - the only way to escape the horror of the rejection of my
nothingness. "Oh God, I can't live like this, I don't want to live like this, I
don't want to live, I shouldn't live."
The horror is unbearable and does not last very long. I sink down into a deep
gloom where I feel extremely hurt, sad and bitter about the deliberate rejection
which makes me feel more worthless than I usually do. (I am almost constantly
reminded of my worthlessness and other negative qualities, such as
ludicrousness, in my everyday life by the presence of the green creature.) I
would like to fight against the person's rejection, to stand up for myself in
order that he/she retract his/her rejections and replace it with apologies and
acceptance. But I feel too weak to fight and anyway it's pointless. The truth is
that I am nothing, and you can't fight the truth.
The person who rejects me is absolutely right. I have no qualities. I cannot
grasp what 'me' is. It is a vacuum. Or if I do have some 'qualities', they are
anything negative you can think of - I'm bad, boring, ludicrous, stupid,
selfish, etc. In short, I am shit, and shit is also nothing, a despicable
nothing. Feeling nothing is an agonizing, bitter sensation.
I cannot live with all this pain. It is unbearable and I feel desperate because
nothing can change, can break this deadlock. I cannot wipe that rejection out of
time, out of existence, and I cannot alter my nothingness - I will continue to
be a prisoner of it. Death is the only way to break out of this deadlock and get
release, relief17. Why does a nothing live? It's incongruous, it's
wrong. Why do I waste space on this earth?
(a) Sometimes in the presence of the rejector, the bitterness of the gloom stage
becomes aggressiveness and I may lash out at the rejector. This behaviour,
however, so horrifies me, makes me feel such a monster, that the hurt for the
rejection is overshadowed by an intensified feeling of being a despicable
nothing accompanied by unbearable guilt.
(b) Other times, when I am alone after rejection, the bitterness of the gloom
stage alternates with or is accompanied by aggressiveness towards the absent
rejector in the form of an imaginary argument where I stand up for myself. (This
happens when I have not felt or have not dared express my aggressiveness in his
presence.) Finally, however, it is the rejection of myself as a nothing which
prevails. Sometimes the aggressiveness ceases to be directed towards the absent
rejector and becomes aggressiveness without clear direction, without a
(conscious) target and is thus very frustrating.
(c) Other times during the gloom stage, the chaotic horror periodically
resurfaces and alternates with the gloom.
In the presence of others, my behaviour is characterized by an effort to make a
highly favourable impression on them; that I am highly intelligent, interesting,
perceptive, feminine, sexy, beautiful, strong, masculine, etc. etc. This effort
is accompanied by highly exaggerated speech content and intonation as well as
hand and facial gestures. Simultaneously, I feel sometimes vaguely, sometimes
fairly strongly that my behaviour and its motivations are ludicrous. While my
ludicrous behaviour is taking place, I feel the green creature watching me. My
awareness of its presence, its mocking 'comments' and its derisive 'laughter' is
sometimes vague, other times very strong. I don't actually hear its voice but I
feel it. I have no doubt of its existence. The more loudly it 'laughs' at me,
the more horrified I feel.
When I am alone after a gathering, the green creature makes me realize and feel
fully how utterly ludicrous I was at the gathering. It 'tells' me that I was
trying to fool others and myself that I am 'something' when I know I am nothing.
The feeling of utter ludicrousness and nothingness and the chaotic horror they
cause, reach their peak with my conviction that others perceived my
ludicrousness, the full extent of it. "Fool! You made an impression alright, but
it wasn't the one you wanted. How can people accept or even tolerate a fool like
you?" Death is the only escape from these excruciatingly painful feelings.
Because all the symptoms mentioned till now are so painful, I frequently escape
from them by becoming numb. The numbness often occurs automatically, that is, it
takes place without any conscious will or effort, but sometimes I evoke it
deliberately. In this state of numbness, my emotions are anaesthetized and so,
frequently, is my body. I feel utter indifference towards others and myself. I
feel dead inside. I feel as if I don't exist in this world.
I feel this numb state as one of only partial death. Intellectually, I know that
I am still alive. I don't want this partial death. I desire total death. When I
am obsessed with the thought of death, the green creature disappears. This is
because his goal has been accomplished - in wanting to die, I have submitted to
the will of the womb (the green creature). The only other occasion in my
everyday life where the presence of the green creature watching me is
non-existent or almost non-existent is when I'm occupied with housework. At that
time I go through the movements like a robot - I do not feel or think much or at
all and thus the creature cannot very well 'criticize' me18.
At the same time, however, there are vague feelings, which sometimes become
clear and strong for a second or two, of being very unsure of myself, feeling
scared and helpless and weak lest any man comment on my femaleness. I want to
hide my head and run away, out of everyone's sight.
These mainly vague feelings explode to the surface fully and clearly when any
man does make an obscene or ridiculing comment on my femaleness. For a moment or
two, I feel as if transfixed by a chaos, by a paralyzing terror. But then,
though I continue to feel utterly at their mercy, impotent and somewhat chaotic,
I am also overcome by a violent desire to kill these men in the most violent way
I can think of, such as swiftly snapping their necks, tearing knives through
their bodies or tearing their flesh and limbs apart with my bare hands so that
in the end they would be severely and unrecognizably mutilated. I feel this
passionately and also feel that I could perform this act mercilessly, completely
cold-bloodedly.
The emotional-intellectual interpretation of the above is as follows: The men
who comment so negatively on my femaleness are instantly and totally identified
with the all-powerful womb, my mother, who wanted me a boy. Their degrading,
humiliating and ridiculing comments make me feel as nothing, as weak and
powerless as I had felt in the womb where my femaleness was at the mercy of my
mother's constant attacks. The ridiculing remarks as well not only point out to
me all too clearly the ludicrousness of my being female, but also my distortion,
my ugliness in face and body (I have felt in the Sessions that the womb
distorted me beyond repair). The men's comments, as well as their touch, also
affect me so greatly because, as I discovered in a Session, I feel any negative
comment or touch by a man as deadly rape. In the Sessions, I have felt the womb
as a spider raping me with its evil black legs (the rejecting messages) in its
endeavour to kill me - a terrifying, chaotic feeling. The womb's rejecting
messages make me disintegrate, adding to the feeling of chaos and terror.
I react to all these unbearable feelings with the violent desire to kill
mercilessly and cold-bloodedly those who cause me these unbearable feelings,
that is, the men, but more basically my womb-spider-mother. At this point, I am
identifying fully with my mother - I want to kill her just as she had wanted to
kill me when I was in her womb.
However, though I am identifying with my mother, I am still at the same time the
weak, helpless and terrified female and thus my violent desires are not acted
upon. When, as sometimes happens, I try to return a verbal attack or hit out at
the men, they always foil me and ridicule me even more.
All the above helps explain why, when I walk alone in the street, I feel like a
strong, powerful man and, simultaneously, a weak, helpless female. I feel the
latter because I am afraid of an attack by the men who symbolize the womb. My
only defence against these awful female feelings is to react to them be feeling
and behaving like a powerful man - like the men who would comment on me. The
actual attack by the men momentarily breaks down my defence but I soon react
again with the violent feelings.
Doctor's comment: The very rapid alternation of the functioning of R10's sex
identity and the reactivated rejecting womb makes her feel as if her bipolar
feelings occur simultaneously.
R10's sexual problem Here is a fairly full description of my sexual
activity before, during and after orgasm with a male partner. First of all, I
point out that the only way I can reach orgasm is through clitoral stimulation.
The whole process, then, is as follows:
(a) When the tongue first touches the clitoris, I feel sharp pleasure-pain-fear
- like a shock.
(b) As the stimulation continues, I try to avoid the pain and fear by
neutralizing the pleasure which causes them. I achieve this by thinking of some
non-descript event that happened very recently.
(c) When orgasm begins I feel pleasure.
(d) The pleasure is very quickly dissipated by painful convulsions in the
abdomen which are periodically interrupted by a dry, aggravating cough; pain in
the genital organs; feeling that I am a whore; feeling that I'm going to die.
The feeling of impending death is horrifying and leads to deep depression and
sobbing.
(e) After this, I feel emotionally and physically drained. I don't want to feel
anything at all and so I feel nothing, I feel numb. Of course, this is purely
self-defence against all the previous and unbearable pain.
R10's ANSWERS TO THE HISTORY QUESTIONNAIRE AFTER AUTOPSYCHOGNOSIA SESSIONS
Question: What are your complaints?
Answer: (a) Since I was very young I have suffered from sharp, stabbing pains
which can occur in any part of my body. (The pains are due to the reactivation
of the memory of the rejecting intra-uterine messages - in the Sessions, I often
felt the rejecting messages as the stabbing of knives or spider's legs.)
(b)The cough. For interpretation ( see pp. 33 and 47.)
(c) In the last years of gym, I frequently had to stop training a few minutes
after I'd begun because of intense pain in my calves. (When I was in the womb,
my mother wanted me to be a male. Thus, only a male is perfect. Unconsciously, I
thought that through gymnastics I could become that perfect male. In other
words, I was trying to satisfy my mother's wish. As a result, I tried, with my
female body, to do perfect gym as a man. Thus, the muscles of my legs eventually
became overdeveloped and looked like a man's, but they hurt me terribly because
I was trying to transform their female nature.)
(d) The green creature. For description and interpretation,(pp. 34-36 and 164).
Question: Describe any pharmaceutical therapy or any other therapy you have
undergone.
Answer: I have realized that my allergy is exacerbated not only by metals but by
the hot summer sun. (The heat of summer reactivates the rejecting womb which I
felt as a metal blast furnace.)
Question: What events in your life can you remember? Which of these events do
you consider important? What emotions did these important events produce in you?
Answer: I now remember some events and state from my early life which I had
repressed, but most basic and important among them is the experience of the
rejecting womb (see Sessions).
Question: Do you always understand the motives of your behaviour? If not,
give a specific example.
Answer: I realize now that before the Sessions I really had no idea as to the
motives of my behaviour as a whole. For example, the reason for my perfectionism
is that my mother wanted a boy and so only a boy can be perfect. To satisfy my
mother's wish, I try to become a boy, I try to be perfect. But, of course, I can
never be perfect because I'm a female.
When I want my mother to tell me that she sees how terrible I feel, I really
want her to recognize and accept that she's the one who put me into this mess.
My depressions, my aggressiveness and the motives of my behaviour in general
have their roots in the rejecting womb.
Question: What do you desire most in life?
Answer: I want to feel calmness which I feel only the love, affection and
protection of a man can give me.
Question: What are your ambitions?
Answer: The same as before the Sessions.
Question: What are your expectations?
Answer: I have none.
Question: What do you fear most?
Answer: (a) Rejection, which is part and parcel of my very existence and of
life. (b) I know that the God I was so afraid of is the rejecting womb.
Question: What are your other fears?
Answer: I still have the same terror of spiders, webs, etc. as before. (See pp.
40-43) for interpretations.
Question: Describe your recreational activities.
Answer: I still drink as I did before the Sessions but now I understand what's
happening within me at such times. At first drink gives me the chance to express
things I really want to express. (Without it I'm so inhibited and stiff.)
However, sooner or later it reactivates the rejecting womb (see Session 25).
Question: Are any of your dreams repeated in a stereotyped fashion?
Answer: I often dream that the love of a man could make me feel calm. But
there's always a big crowd between us which prevents me from approaching him and
touching him. (The dream expresses not only my pessimism but also the real
impossibility of my approaching and grasping calmness I want so much. Because I
did not have a moment of calmness in the womb, so I do not have the right to
have it now or ever - For interpretation of the spider dreams I had before, and
during the Sessions,(see pp. 40-43)
Question: What are your feelings for your mother?
Answer: Although I now know the cause of my aggressiveness towards my mother, I
often can't control the aggressiveness.
Question: What are your feelings for your father?
Answer: I'm still fixated to him. I also feel aggressive towards him although I
realize why (see Sessions 6, 7, 8, 14 and 15).
Question: What are your feelings for your brother?
Answer: I realized in the 14th Session that when my mother was pregnant with my
brother, I felt aggressive towards the baby in her womb. However, since his
birth, I don't remember having any unpleasant feelings towards him.
Question: Your feelings about the interpersonal relations of your mother and
father?
Answer: On this subject, I think and feel exactly as I did before the Sessions
(see Sessions 8,15 and 16).
Question: Your feelings about the interpersonal relations of you mother and
brother?
Answer: The same as before the Sessions. Their 'communication' reminds me of
mine with my mother, but I'm very glad to see that my brother reacts positively
to her attempts to dominate him.
Question: Your feelings about the interpersonal relations of your father and
brother?
Answer: Their 'communications' reminds me of my father's and mine.
Question: Do you feel that you have concealed anything in answering the above
questions?
Answer: Now, no. Apart from the intra-uterine rejection, my father's rejection
and so on, which I could not possibly have remembered, I had not mentioned a few
factors in the original questionnaire - such as the sexual attraction for the
45-year old woman - either because I had forgotten them or because I had not
realized they were relevant. An illustration of the latter is the following
letter I wrote when I had taken the decision to commit suicide, just a couple of
days before beginning the preparation for autopsychognosia sessions.
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"This is not going to be an abortive attempt. It is going to succeed. I have reached a blank wall in my life which seems to me to be impossible to get past and for this reason my desperation has reached a point such as I have never known before. Its burden is intolerable. I feel so very, very alone and I see absolutely no hope for the future. I did hope once, tremendously, even in my darkest moments. I had faith in other people and, I suppose, vaguely hoped that I would have more faith in myself and perhaps be able to achieve something. Now I realize very clearly and cold-bloodedly that there's no faith and no hope. Yes, I'm still young but I feel like a vegetable, and I'll grow older only to be the same, but older, vegetable. I cannot change what is so deeply embedded inside me. I know myself well, and I know I'm so locked up inside myself, I'll never get out. I have no faith in myself and never will have. I'm inadequate." |
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Question: Do you have anything else to add?
Answer: My everyday feelings of rejection, ludicrousness, being a nothing, not
being able to communicate, not being a woman, all stem from my rejection in the
womb. I project the womb to the green creature and to people around me who, in
the final analysis, all reject me as the womb had done.
As a foetus in the womb, I felt my mother's rejection as an attempt to kill me.
The chaotic terror her rejection caused me was not only because I felt her
threatening my existence and my sex, but also because I felt her rejection as
deliberate. Because I was so weak and tiny and she all-powerful and enormous, I
had to believe what she believed - that I was a nothing. If I did not, she would
punish me with stronger and more painful rejecting messages, as I learned when I
tried to react to her.
Her rejection made me feel that I should never have been conceived in the first
place, that both my existence within her and my sex were ludicrous. My feeling
of ludicrousness was intensified by the fact that I felt her rejection distorted
me physically, mentally and emotionally.
As well, I felt not a trace of communication between us. I felt her attacking me
blindly, mercilessly, without any consideration of me, as if I were an object, a
piece of rubbish. I could not get the message to her across the amniotic fluid
to leave me alone. I was in pain, but she didn't care. She kept up her attack
then and she's still attacking me now. I don't feel I've grown up. I don't feel
I've left her. I'm still living in the womb.
1Doctor's note: R10's words here show severe repression of her
fixation to her father.
2R10's note: Why didn't I mention in the Session something which is so
obvious? I not only indentify with my brother in the dream, but also with the
female singer who in reality looks like a man, but in the dream was trying hard
to look like a woman. There is strong identification there. (Realization made a
few days after the Session).
3R10's note: This is the first time I realized that the "wants" and
"can'ts" that I say to myself during sex refer to my wanting but not being able
to be female during sex.
4R10's note: My mother confirmed to me that when I was two, she was again
pregnant. During the fifth month of her pregnancy, she suffered a miscarriage
and this upset her greatly.
5R10's note: I felt my mother's second pregnancy as a total rejection of
me, which instantly reactivated my intra-uterine rejection.
6R10's note: I mean rape.
7R10's note: I consider penetration of the penis into my vagina as rape
because "it forces me to play the role of a female and that means catastrophe"
(p. 39).
8R10's note: The walls of the room represent the walls of the womb.
9R10's note: I have said many times in previous Sessions that the
intra-uterine experience wore me out and made me old.
10R10's note: I mean my female ancestors.
11R10's note: Here, I am identifying with the womb which I frequently see
in the Sessions as a giant black spider.
12R10's note: The horror is because, though I am identifying with the
spider, I am simultaneously identifying with its victim.
13R10's note: Now I am fully the evil spider, no more its victim.
14R10's note: Just as she wanted to kill me when I was in her womb.
15R10's note: In other words, I am the victim of God-womb-spider.
16For meaning of term 'psychoticlike' see § 127.
17R10's note: Actually, I feel there are two possible ways to break the
deadlock - death or utter insanity where the ego is so shattered that it ceases
to feel anything, permanently. Because I have not reached this state, death is
the only plausible alternative for me.
18Doctor's note: For the interpretation of R10's depressivelike S and P,
see pp.53-54)