ABSTRACT
The week following his emotional flooding Attis entered my office looking very pale. He told me that the suit he was wearing was very much like one of mine; in fact, the one I wore on this occasion. In those days, since I did not have much money, I purchased my clothing off the rack. Attis could easily find the same clothing. He had had the impulse the day before to visit a clothing store and while there had purchased the suit in question, along with a shirt and tie very like my own. He also told me that he had eaten a turkey dinner the night before and had been anxious ever since. He knew that I had come to the United States from Turkey. Although his awareness that his imitative behaviour, his buying the new suit, had been spontaneous, he remained unaware of the meaning of his symbolic internalisation of me by eating the turkey dinner. As the hour progressed, he spoke of his fantasies of destruction directed towards me that he had entertained en route to my office. I told him that a turkey stood for my image; it was a symbol since I was a Turk and had come to the USA from Turkey. I added that he had a wish to resemble me by “eating me up” and his sub sequent fear was that he had destroyed me by this act. I chose not to tell him that he might also want to destroy me because he was afraid that every libidinal object in his mind could turn into a destructive one. In a sense, 84I “humanised” his bizarre wish to eat me. Following this exchange, he relaxed and asked what I thought about the recent Supreme Court decision about prayer in schools; he speculated about my religion. The tenor of my reply was: “Look, if you want to be like me, you need not make the resemblance an all-or-nothing business. You can get useful things from me, and you may reject other aspects of me. You can choose. You are a different person than I and, in the long run, we will continue being two different persons and continue to work together.”
