Ibid., pp. 618-619. 5 страница

The first complaints the patient made to the analyst concerned snakes and worms, which appeared in writhing masses the moment she closed her eyes. Extraordinarily enough, it had never occurred to her to mention these snakes to any of the more than two dozen doctors who had so far treated her. And yet these were exceedingly distressing apparitions, terrifying and loathesome to her. Further­more, if she happened to see a picture of a snake, or to encounter an actual worm in the garden, her fright amounted to sheer terror. Eventually even the sight of the serpentine shape of a telephone cord plunged her into shuddering horror. The analyst asked her to put her snakes and worms into form on paper. He received a paint­ing which is reproduced in black and white in Figure 1. (Illustrations appear after p. 152.)

The picture represents a swarming tangle of snakes or worms, somewhere in the open, suspended, as it were, in space, but occupy­ing the full expanse of the picture. When the patient was encouraged to look a little more closely, the worms and snakes took on the most monstrous and menacing shapes (see Figure 2).

This sort of grotesque caricature intensified her fear immeasur­ably, and with it the diarrhea worsened to an alarming extent. But

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