CASE HISTORIES 39 



He denied wet dreams, nightmares, or dreams of coitus, but 

 said he had day-dreamed of sexual intercourse. He said his 

 dreams were of finding money on trees and bushes, and of going 

 fishing. He also used to imagine himself the boy characters in 

 the Horatio Alger books of which he was very fond. 



General observations: He was a clumsy boy, walking in a 

 rolling, loosejointed manner that had grown much worse in the 

 last two years. His one main idea was to get out of the hospital. 

 He insisted he was all right, there was nothing the matter with 

 him, and if his family cared anything for him, they would come 

 and take him home. It was noticeable that he preferred to see 

 his father rather than his mother in spite of childhood love for 

 her and fear of the father. (Another case, an eighteen-year-old 

 boy, whose mother incest desires broke into full consciousness, 

 used to greet his father cordially and rebuff his mother, even 

 striking her and shouting, "Take this woman away, I've never 

 seen her before.") He begged money and candy from them like 

 a child. 



He had never confided in anyone and was unwilling to do so 

 now. At every opportunity he would run away, even when the 

 father was taking him for a walk about the grounds. He was 

 deceitful and lied up and down, denying the information given me 

 by other members of the family. He feared the doctors were 

 going to hurt him in some way. He disliked being looked at, 

 and during interviews with me picked nervously at his finger 

 nails. He said that when he lost his jobs his brothers scolded 

 him and he was afraid they might put him in prison for it, so he 

 was anxious to get away from them and did not object to going to 

 the first hospital. 



Since he would not talk freely I used the association word 

 test in an effort to discover his complexes, but it accomplished 

 very little because he would not give many free associations 

 afterwards. I made three tests, embodying in the second and 

 third tests the words which aroused emotion in the first. By the 

 time we reached the third test he had learned to give stereotyped 

 responses to nearly all the former complex-indicators. 



Eye, lips, mouth, tongue, suck, sucker and swallow were 

 associated together and aroused much emotion and resistance. 



