The Knowledge of The Womb
PART I
EXCERPTS FROM AND SUMMARIES OF R10's HISTORY AND SESSIONS

R10's ANSWERS TO THE HISTORY QUESTIONNAIRE BEFORE AUTOPSYCHOGNOSIA SESSIONS

History: Female, 26 years' old, university degree, social worker, single, brother eight years' younger, state of health of parents and brother very good.

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

Session 1 The Session begins with nausea and a dry , aggravating cough.
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.

R10's thoughts after Session 1: In this Session I did not learn much that was new about myself. I was, however, able to express feelings I had either not been able to express at all before, or not been able to express so clearly.
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.

Session 2 The Session begins with very strong contractions of the abdominal muscles which oblige R10 to curl up. Periodically she presents a dry, aggravating cough. During this Session, R10 vividly revives her obsessional behaviour on the stairs of her house when she was a child (see History p. 21). There is a virtual absence of emotion in this Session which is practically a repetition of the first (signs of strong resistance).

Session 3 The Session begins with very strong contractions of the abdominal muscles and a dry, aggravating cough which is repeated periodically.

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.)

Session 4
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's thoughts after Session 4: Although for a fraction of a second I felt rejection from the womb in the Session, although I felt I was reliving something that had actually happened to me, this feeling has not remained with me. I do not and cannot fully accept or believe it now. I cannot trust what I said in the Session.
Doctor's observation: The fourth Session is characterized by a slight diminuation in R10's resistance to reliving unconscious states.

Session 5 Throughout this entire Session, the dry, aggravating cough alternates with painful contractions of the abdominal muscles.

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 ...

R10's thoughts after Session 5: In the first Session, I said that I wanted to get beyond the restrictions, be free of them. The restrictions are the womb. The solid wall around me, which I mentioned in the fourth Session, is the womb even though I had said then that I built a wall. I can still only half-believe most things I've said in the Session so far. As for the thoughts I noted above and after the previous Sessions, I have the feeling that they all sound rather stupid. Perhaps the only thing I really do believe is the feeling that I'm trapped permanently behind a wall which surrounds me.

Session 6 Strong nausea. Strong contractions of the abdominal muscles. R10 makes the same complaints as in past Sessions about her mother's coldness. She gives the impression that she is not allowing the Session to evolve.
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's thoughts after Session 6: In this Session I became aware of unconscious sexual desires for my father. I feel that the unknown woman in my sex fantasies symbolized me while the unknown man symbolized my father. But why were the two people making love in the fantasies unknown to me? - because I considered everything in terms of myself, and I knew my father. Because it was wrong, perhaps prohibited, to want to make love with my father, the man in the fantasy had to be unknown to me - repression of my desires for my father. But the fact that the woman in the fantasy could not be me, the fact that she too had to be unknown to me, shows severe repression.

Session 7 During this Session R10 revives an experience she had at the age of six.
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.)

Session 8
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 ...

R10's thoughts after Session 8:
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.

Session 9 R10: ... Right now, I feel I would like to do gym as a man, to do his steps and movements with the muscles, the power and the strength that go into them. I feel mannish in the legs. They feel very big and muscley. I just don't know what I am. I could almost be a man. I hate this feeling. It frightens me. Maybe that's why in gym I couldn't express the lyricism, the femininity I loved and wanted to express so much. I had it inside me but it couldn't come out. (R10's bipolar desires - on the one hand to do gymnastics as a man and on the other as a woman - reveal for the first time unconscious confusion concerning her sex identity.) I could only 'express' powerful, manly movements. I had fantastic power for them because my legs had become so huge and muscley. But at the same time, my legs gave me a huge complex. I never want to have legs like that again. This is one big reason why I don't want to return to gym. (R10 is strict with her diet. So she loses weight and the dimensions of her legs decrease.)
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.

Session 10 R10 begins by recounting a dream she had had three nights before this Session.
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 ...

Session 11 The Session begins with the dry, harsh cough.
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 ...

R10's realization after Session 11: One form of resistance in this and the last Sessions has been consciously to control the convulsions by lying on my stomach. In this position, the convulsive movements which normally throw the upper and lower halves of my body forward are greatly hampered. (See development in Session 12.)

Session 12 R10: These strong convulsions are drawing me into the foetal position, in the womb. I'm crying because they're putting me into a position where my mother didn't want me. I feel so bewildered and hurt. Why shouldn't she want me? Ether - I can smell it. It's in my throat, being pushed against my nose, makes me feel so sick, so nauseous. I'm helpless, can't push it away. It's something inevitable I can't do anything about. My legs are paralyzed. (At this point her legs are extended.) I can't draw them into the foetal position even though I know that's where I'll find the answers to my nothingness and my feeling a boy ... (silence) ...
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!

R10's thoughts after Session 12: In this Session I was able to make what I think are important discoveries because my resistance was considerably less than in previous Sessions. I feel, however, that there was some control. I made a conscious effort to stop my crying and I controlled my aggressiveness towards my mother.

Session 13 R10: ... I know some interfering, domineering mothers. I identify with their oppressed children. The mothers are my mother. I'm very angry with my mother. She could see she had an obviously troubled child and she didn't do anything about it. She'd never try to talk to me about it, never asked me, never tried to help. She didn't want to know or accept I was troubled, mixed up. And I always had to act and think as she wanted. Never any discussions. If I dared make any remarks that clashed with her thinking, I was told I was absolutely wrong and not to be so stupid; she knew what was right. Who told her she was a god? ...
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 ...

R10's thoughts after Session 13: In this Session, my resistance was much less and on the whole I was able to go wherever the drug took me. This was the first Session in which I gave full vent to my aggressiveness towards my mother. Another important factor for me is that this Session finally drove home the point that I was supposed to be a boy. Session 12 almost convinced me, but I was still left with the feeling that my intelligent mother could not have been so stupid and so old-fashioned in wanting her first-born to be a boy. In everyday life the aggressiveness I feel, which reaches a point where I want to explode, is because my mother's will was for a boy. I couldn't explode with fury in reaction to the womb's pressure on me because I was inside it and too small and weak. I had repressed the memory of the awful experience in the womb, but the aggressiveness, unfulfilled and seemingly without direction, remained within me in my life thereafter.
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.

Session 14 At the beginning of this Session R10 presents resistance each time her unconscious feelings for her father tend to become conscious. Towards the end of the Session, she realizes more clearly than in past Sessions how fixated she is to her father and how indifferent she thinks he is towards her. She also realizes more fully the degree of and reasons for the guilt she felt (and feels) for her sexual desires for her father which were expressed through masturbation.
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.

Session 15 The Session begins with muscular contractions which pull R10 up into the sitting position. This makes her wonder, because in previous Sessions the muscular contractions had obliged her to assume the foetal position. When she tries, out of curiosity, to curl up, the muscular contractions again force her to sit up. For R10's interpretation of this muscular activity, (see p.37.)
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.

R10's conclusions from Session 15: What was the significance of the convulsions drawing me into a sitting position at the beginning of the Session? I mentioned then that I was not in the womb because of this position. There are two answers to the question.
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.

Interpretation of the dream mentioned in Session 15: I was afraid that my mother would wake up and see that I was making love with my father, in the form of a father substitute, and that I was taking him away from her. As well, I was afraid she'd see that I was a female because I was making love as a female.

Session 16 R10: I feel great fear. I don't know why. I have to calm down because with the fear I can't think, I have no control over myself. From the last Session I know that the cause of the fear is the green creature which symbolizes many things including sex and punishment. The fear of sex comes from the fear of punishment, punishment by my mother. She's going to make me feel terrified of having any sexual arousal. It's not supposed to exist. I have to stamp it out. When she caught me masturbating she made me feel terrible ... I'm not expressing what I want to say. I can't talk. That often happens to me. Many times I want to say things but they don't come out, I get stuck,my tongue gets tied. It reminds me of times when I feel very excited in sex and I want to pull the man's hair, dig my fingers into him, but I can't. I can't seem to move. So all the tension remains within me. It just goes round and round inside me. It doesn't come out anywhere - through my hands, my mouth ... I'm afraid ... I'm afraid of being a man ...
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.

Session 17 The Session begins with chills and movements from the waist down similar to the movements of a man during the sexual act. Simultaneously, R10 feels that she is a naked, emaciated man with a limp penis. She feels like a concentration camp victim. This feeling alternates with the feeling that she is a hideous creature which was born burnt and half-dead of an ostrich. R10 identifies with the ostrich which tries to escape from deadly danger by hiding only its head in the sand while the rest of its body is exposed to the enemy's attack. She also identifies with the ostrich in her unsuccessful attempt to hide her distortion (caused by the intra-uterine fire) which makes her feel ludicrous. (In her everyday life R10 feels unbearably ludicrous at the slightest thing. She also feels that she is hideously ugly.)
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 ...

Session 18 R10: I don't exist for the next person when I'm not being used as their tool. I don't have any meaning for them except for use, and at the time of use. Only then do I exist for them. And if I'm not being used, then I don't exist. My mother uses me in the womb. She acts on me blindly and does whatever she wants with me. She doesn't consider me at all. I'm fed with rejecting stimuli and when I'm not fed with such stimuli in everyday life, I don't exist. Why don't I exist? Because I only exist through my mother. I have to exist in pain. The pain is within me and all around me. She puts unbearable pressure on me in the womb, bombarding me with her rejecting messages - makes me feel I'm going to die ... (R10's description here shows her agonizing everyday reference to the womb. See also Session 17 and 19. During her 18th Session R10 also realized that the man with whom she had a relationship at that time symbolized her father and her father the womb.)

Session 19 This Session is almost a repetition of the 18th. R10 again realizes that she can exist only under one condition: that she revive almost incessantly the conditions of the rejecting womb. Thus, in her everyday life R10 unconsciously creates conditions of rejection. A typical example from this period is the evolution of every meeting with her friend which R10 unconsciously steers to what she feels is his inevitable rejection of her.

Session 20 The Session begins with the usual muscular contractions and cough. R10 sees images of a spider's web which traps and immobilizes her so that the spider can penetrate her body, and particularly her vagina, with its legs. R10 feels that the web is the womb and the spider's legs the rejecting messages.
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.)

R10 then recounts her feelings and actions: As soon as the doctor leaves the room, I feel the need to go to the toilet again. When I return, I see the doctor and tell him that it's the terror of something I'm trying to avoid which makes me want to urinate constantly. I enter the room and lie down. The convulsions begin immediately. One minute I contract forward into the foetal position and the next my back, neck and head are thrown backwards, my body forming an arch, as if I'm trying to get out of the womb. My face has great pressure on it, as if it is being squashed in . My head aches terribly. My impulse is to lie on my stomach to impede the convulsions, but I force myself not to do so and let the process continue to see where it will lead me. The cough periodically interrupts the convulsions.
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 ...

Session 21 The Session begins with the usual muscular contractions. R10 feels that she is trapped in a spider's web. The legs of an enormous black spider penetrate her body and transmit an electric current of tremendous voltage which causes her violent spasms of the whole body and the feeling that she is exploding and disintegrating into countless pieces. Screaming and extreme terror and panic accompany this lengthy subjective state which R10 characterizes as the revival of her intra-uterine rejection.
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 ...

Session 22 R10: ... I see lightning. It's in the shape of a spider. It's a spider of lightning. It's going to put an electric current through me. I don't want to get an electric shock ... (silence) ... (At this point R10 admits that she neutralized the image because it caused her unbearable fear. The doctor encourages her to return to the image.) ... It's very dangerous to get an electric shock through water. The walls of the womb are a spider which sends electric shocks through the amniotic fluid that hit me (long silence - resistance).
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 ...

Session 23 In this Session, R10 realizes that there is nothing good about her because her existence and her sex did not satisfy the womb. She also realizes that she is not allowed to expect anything good from her environment because she did not experience anything good in the intra-uterine environment. R10 feels sever anxiety and tries to scratch her face with her nails.
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.)

(After the Session R10 mentions that the green dragon with the sharp teeth symbolizes the rejecting womb and combines the symbolism of the green creature of Session 15 with the shark's teeth from Session 20.)

Session 24 During this Session R10 feels ludicrous because of her presence in the womb contrary to the latter's will. Consequently the feeling of ludicrousness is generalized to every sphere of her everyday life. "There's nothing I can feel, there's nothing I can do without feeling a fool for it," says R10.
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 ...

Session 25 R10: ... When I drink alcohol, I always overdo it. At first I feel high but then I go into a depression, I get nauseous and often end up vomiting. I understand now why I drink so much. I want to create inner conditions (intense nausea) just like the inner conditions the rejecting womb caused me. Drunkenness takes me back to the womb and that's where I want to go so that I can smash it! I want to kill my mother but I only end up feeling sick as a dog. Yet my sole purpose in getting drunk is to kill my mother. My sole purpose in everything I do in life is to kill my mother. I have to break out of the little dark prison cell she's put me into. It's made of the strongest materials in the world. But even if I put a bomb to it, I'll only end up buried under the rubble ...

Session 26 R10 presents severe anxiety.
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 ...

R10's observation after Session 26: In this Session I identify with the spider (my mother's womb) in order to escape the burning I suffer in the womb. This identification, however, is only brief because the womb easily overpowers me. I become its victim again and start to burn.

Session 27 R10: ... I feel tremendous pressure on me, from all sides. It's coming from the womb. I feel squashed ... I can't stand it ... I don't want to live ... The legs of the huge black spider are touching my fingers. Ooh, they're sending electricity through me. (At this point, her arms are extended out from her shoulders, her body is straight. Arms and body form the shape of a cross.) I'm Christ on the cross¹⁵ ... I feel so helpless, so weak ... It's the end ... Doctor, I'm dying ... I can't breathe ... I'm staring straight into the most unbearably terrifying vacuum ... (terrified screams) - (Because R10's terror is lengthy, the doctor is obliged to stop the Session with an intramuscular injection of 50 mg chlorpromazine. Shortly after the injection R10 says:) The womb is the beginning and the end of my life ... I'm stuck forever in a deep cavern of darkness.

Session 28 The main characteristic of this Session is R10's neutralization of the pharmacodynamic activity of the psychedelic drug. After the Session, however, R10 wants to continue the Sessions because (a) only during the Sessions can she express the pressure, pain and terror of the rejecting womb and thus feel some sort of release and (b) only during the Sessions can she express her aggressiveness towards her mother, something which also gives her some feeling of release.

Session 29 R10: I feel great pressure inside me and all around me. I feel distorted. I'm hiding under the blankets because I don't want anybody to see me ... (muscular contractions, anxiety which increases leading to lengthy screaming) ... I'm in hell ... I'm going to die ... I can't stand it ... I want to die. (The last phrases are repeated continuously for a long time.) ... Somebody please kill me, put me out of my misery ... I'm getting electricity through my hands. (Her body and arms have formed the shape of a cross.) I'm Christ on the cross in the womb, in an Easter egg that's all bloody ... The electricity has paralyzed me ... (screaming continues) ... I'm a robot ... The spider (the womb) fucks and distorts me ... The electricity is coming up my legs, reaches my genitals. I'm a man with a penis that's vibrating. I'm a male robot. Now I feel like a (female) doll ... Now I don't know what sex I am ... (silence) ...
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 ...

Session 30 R10: ... I feel the convulsions right up in my chest. They make me very aware of my breasts. I want to tear my breasts off. That way, I won't have problems. The convulsions make me feel ludicrous. I'm ludicrous because I have breasts and female genitals. My mother doesn't accept my being female in the womb. In there, she examines and distorts my every cell because I'm female. She terrifies me with her microscopic examination and distortion. Now I can understand why all those school and university exams terrified me out of my mind. Going into the examination room was like being put under the microscope in the womb. It's as if those exams we examining every molecule in me. Going into the exam room was like stepping straight into the green dragon's mouth with the fire burning ...
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

Depressivelike S & P The agonising symptoms leading me towards suicide before I began the Sessions were virtually indescribable because they were incomprehensible and I was ignorant of their cause. Through my experience and knowledge from the Sessions, I can now set them down as: (a) The feeling that I am being watched almost constantly by the green creature (see pp.34-36 and 164). (b) The feeling that others reject me because I am nothing. (c) The feeling that I am utterly ludicrous. (d) The feeling that I cannot communicate with others. (e) Other mental and physical symptoms.

Rejection by others Rejections, big and 'small', explicit or implied, enter me like a shaft and shatter me. At this point, I feel a chaotic horror for the rejection and particularly for the intention behind it. I feel that the rejector is deliberately hurting me and wants to reduce me to the nothing he or she thinks I am (this even in the case of close friends). Simultaneously, I feel intensely that yes, I am nothing, and this too is a horrifying feeling.
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?
The reactions I have described till now may be modified in various ways:
(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.

The feeling of ludicrousness Whether I have been rejected by somebody or not, I often feel extremely ludicrous.
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.

The feeling that I cannot communicate Another factor which causes me bitter gloom is my feeling that I cannot communicate with people around me because I am stupid, empty, nothing. Though people have said nothing to this effect, I'm convinced that they think me stupid and suchlike and that it's a waste of time trying to communicate with me. Though it is my feeling of nothingness which drives me to try to be 'something' accepted by others, it is this very feeling of nothingness which dooms my effort to failure. Failure of communication is further ensured by my strong feeling that there is a certain space between others and myself across which words have to get. But my words don't get across. They get lost somewhere in that space which is like a vacuum, an emptiness which swallows up words and the feelings behind them. I am left feeling isolated and lonely.

Other mental and physical symptoms The bitter gloom, which is accompanied by general physical exhaustion, robs me of any will for physical activity. It also causes intellectual lethargy - it is particularly difficult or impossible for me to concentrate on anything intellectual.
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.

Example of schizophreniclike and paranoiaclike state Very frequently, as I'm walking alone in the street, I feel very strongly like a man in the way I hold myself and walk, in my feeling that I am sure and strong, powerful, not to be fooled with.
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).

Answers on myself: The Sessions speak for themselves as far as my existential problem is concerned.
Answers on my sex: Again, the Sessions speak for themselves on the problem of my sex identity.
Answers on my sexual activity: I had forgotten to mention in the previous questionnaire - clearly because I wanted to forget - that some time before I began the Sessions I had momentarily felt sexual attraction (in a passive capacity, as I later realized) for a 45-year old woman I knew. The attraction occurred during a conversation when she suddenly said to me very sensually, "I'm going to eat you." Some time after I began the Sessions, I frequently felt sexual attraction in my everyday life for a certain type of woman. (I realized that if ever I had sexual activity with such a type, I would be the passive partner.) This woman gave me the impression that she felt sure of herself and free to do anything, particularly in sex which I imagined she would have with any man or woman she wanted. I considered such a woman a whore. I felt her behaviour was like a man's. The interpretation of my attraction in this : Because heterosexual sex takes me back to the hell of the womb, I try to avoid this by replacing men with women who behave like men. I also had dreams where I, with male genital organs, was making love with a young woman or girl. It is clear that in these dreams I was trying to become the man that the womb wanted.

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.

Recapitulation of my problems: I cannot bear this continual rejection coming at me from everybody and everything. I cannot bear the painful emotions- rejections of any type or magnitude cause me.
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)}