ABSTRACT
Rodolphe, who had the imposing bearing of an archduke and a mind in constant dread of a mortal threat, was in his second analysis with me. The first analysis had focused chiefly on his oedipal problems. He now brought me his narcissistic flaws, some of which took the form of psychosomatic symptoms. Nausea and vomiting could be associated with his paradoxical relation to his parents: they told him bitter-tasting things would do him good and he was forced to eat them to the point of triggering the organism’s reflex response; wine, blood, and vomit were poorly differentiated; and he was warned that sweet things were bad for him. Thus in his early life Rodolphe had experienced a repeated failure of the taste qualities that are natural to the organism (see p. 62). As a result, he suffered from confusion in both thinking and communication. Scenes in his dreams often took place in a fog. At work, he sometimes muddled up questions he was asked: he generated fog or put 212up a smokescreen, to drown out problems. In addition, he smoked a lot. It seemed that smoking was a way of screening out the paradoxical demands of his parents, particularly during mealtimes, which took place in the kitchen, filled with the fug of steam rising from boiling laundry or simmering saucepans.
