CASE HISTORIES 77 



genitals, and chicken is a slang term for a young woman. Both 

 normal coitus and fellatio ideas are present in the dream. 



Just before he was arrested and taken to hospital he used to 

 sit a great deal on a magnifying lens, but though he puzzled 

 over it he could not now remember why he did it. " That's where 

 the insanity comes in; I can't recall the reason." (Protection 

 against pederasty?) 



General observations: He often had insight into mental con- 

 dition and spoke of his strange sensations. " My mind wavers, 

 and jumps from one subject to another. I remember having 

 three ideas in it all at once. It seems like a piano board, the 

 thoughts chase through it so much. I have trouble articulating. 

 I'm like a ship without a rudder. I must be a nut. Sometimes I 

 get into delusions. In the second talk with you I began to be able 

 to follow one line of thought steadily. Before that my thoughts 

 were all mixed up. I believe I am coming out of it. I can re- 

 member back pretty far now." Sometimes his memory became 

 clouded. 



His attitude toward me was variable. I told him he was 

 mentally sick and that I was trying to help him get well. He 

 responded at first, but in our fourth talk he said, " The first time 

 I saw you, I felt I might confide in you. Now I'm getting sus- 

 picious of you." A month later he said, " I'll confess to you, a 

 secret service man, an intelligence man, but I won't confess to 

 a priest. I like your countenance, whoever you are." And 

 again, "I've been kidded so much, fooled so much, that I feel 

 fortunate to have someone like you to talk with and rely on in re- 

 gard to my mental condition." These confidential moods alter- 

 nated with periods of suspicion in which he began to see me 

 about the grounds disguised in the garb of both sexes. " You're 

 a slick one, Doc., you're a secret service man disguised. I'm well 

 and I want to get out of here." 



Occasionally he felt he was misunderstood and became very 

 depressed and weepy. The paranoid traits appeared at such 

 times. " When I get out of here, I'll be a bad man, I'll fight for 

 my rights. People have used me as a tool, a stepping stone." 

 Once he started to go to his old employers in town to demand an 



