S. You talked to me on the phone last night. I told you not to go out in the street [to obey the impulse to steal]. I told you that something else would take its place. And you wet. Why did you do it when you were asleep?
G. I couldn’t do that when I’m awake. ... I was dreaming about being in the bathtub. I dreamt that I was wet and warm. If you pee on yourself, you get spanked. I remembered both things last night. That it feels good and it feels bad.
I dreamt about the woman with the breasts. You know, going there and taking them. I’m not going there ... we just went to ... to that place, the hot springs that was warm and it smelled good; that’s wrong, because it never smells good there, but it did smell good there, and she was there taking a bath and I just came up behind her but she wasn’t angry. I took her breasts. I just took them in my hands and put them in my mouth. And then I was wet. I was wet and warm.
[Out of trance.] I’m getting very tired. I’m tired of many things. I’m tired of doing the wrong thing; I’m tired of the bad feelings; I’m tired of those kind of thoughts that come in my sleep ... Of wanting those things that I shouldn't have. I’m tired of not remembering what’s the right things, you know . . . Nobody should cry. If you cry, you’re going to get something to cry for.
S. Is that what you believe or is that what she says?
G. I don’t know. I’m not going to find out.
Next hour.
S. O.K. How is the eating? Has it stopped?
G. What eating?
S. And the craving has gone?
G. Yeah. I feel pretty good today. I feel pretty good. And I bought myself a duck, a real neat duck. [I had given the patient a few dollars with the instruction not to use it for food and clothes but to buy something for herself because she had never done that in the past. When she was a child, the family had been bone poor and her mother frozen, too much to permit a few pennies to be spent for “something good.” In recent years, the patient had never stolen things of value that she had kept for herself. And so she was deeply in debt. Even had she had money—and at times, she had the dollars in her hand and could have impulsively indulged—"it never occurred to me to buy something good.”]
S. Is that something you’ve never done in the past? Yes, you never have?
G. Yes, I never have. I was just thinking about . . . I’m going tonight to dinner at D.’s [a friend’s] house, and I was thinking: I wonder if that top shelf really gets dusty and my ducks are up there, and I was thinking about my ducks. I have quite a few ducks. People say, “What do you want?” and I’ll say, “Give me a duck.” I have some ducks from when I was ... I have a rubber duck that I’ve had since I was an infant.
S. Is that the one that you were thinking of yesterday?
G. I don’t know; I don’t know what you’re talking about.
S. You talked about when you were an infant having a duck and rubbing it against your mouth.
G. I don’t know. I don’t remember that.
Wait a minute. We should be talking about . . . something. I really don’t think the whole thing is breasts. It doesn’t feel comfortable to me. I have feelings about breasts, you know; I dig breasts, you know [chuckles]. The thing that puzzles me the most is: why steal? Why that particular method of getting something? Why not buy something? Then there’s the part about getting in [into a house]. And when I say getting in, I think about getting into this and getting into that, like . . . I’m thinking about getting into a woman or . . . and what flashes through my head is my son being born or my daughter being born and my saying, “Put her back." All those things are going through my head. Yesterday when I went to the store to buy the duck, there was a woman coming out of the store as I was going in, and I just pushed through very ... very impolitely ... it just felt good to get in. Do you know what I mean? I have never stolen from stores, only homes. But to satisfy the impulse, it could only be a private home in which a family lives; dark and quiet. And not cold. And not a place that was easy to get into. I can get into any apartment building in my area. I’ve broken into my own apartment dozens of times when I’ve forgotten my key. It’s very simple to get into an apartment. It would never occur to me to go into one of those places and steal anything. (You know, you’ve making me nervous—that’s what you’re really doing.) An apartment is not a home. Most apartments are where just a woman lives or a man lives or ... In a home there’s a mother and a father and children.
You know that even after I was taken out of the box [see above] I used to crawl in it. I just thought of it. I just see myself crawling in the box. That’s where my blanket was, anyway. It was hard to get in. It was a big box. I had to tip it over ... I think that’s why I felt so comfortable about being in jail. When I bust into a house, it’s always dark. That’s not for safety; I just never have the desire to do it at, say, two o’clock in the afternoon. It’s good if it’s cold outside. I always feel like I’ve been there before, like I know where I am, and it’s good to be getting there where it’s comfortable. It’s not a good idea to go up to the door. And then there are things you have to do for your own safety . . . like, you can get your leg bitten off by a dog. So I’d make sure there’s no dog. It’s really neat to go in through a window. Windows are hard to open except the kind they’re putting in houses now—they’re easy ... I don’t want to do this [that is, tell about the ritual].
I want to squeeze in. It’s nice if there’s curtains on the window. To brush against. I suppose I get in the smallest place I can. If not, why don't I go through a sliding glass door or something which is relatively easy to open? Before . . . I’m tense. I don’t know exactly. It’s like vou’re all worked up for something, anxious to . . . like if you were having sex and you were right up there and ready . . . And then when I get in, it’s good. It’s . . . it’s warm in there; it’s . . . it's a giving place to be. Does that make sense? And I can go whewwwww, it’s so neat. And then when I’ve got it in the hand, when I've got it in my hand, then I can leave, it's all done; it’s all finished. Then it doesn’t make any difference how I leave; I can go by the front door. I don’t have to crawl out. And then . . . and then the bad part . . . it’s not really bad, you would think it was bad maybe. I don’t know what you think; some people would think it was bad. And that's the part about getting fucked. That’s really necessary; you really have to be punished for doing that; it [breaking in] was really a bad thing to do. But it never makes it go away, you know; it doesn’t make any difference how bad you get fucked, it just comes back. The getting fucked does not make it go away. But getting the thing makes it go away, makes the hunger part go away. Sometimes I think when I’m wandering around the street or doing whatever I’m doing: looking for a place to get into that... this isn’t going to make any sense but I think ... I don't think I’m a woman. Do you know what I mean? I don’t think I’m a female. No, it’s ... I really will be... really a functional, complete, thinking, feeling, wanting, male individual. It is some different from when I’d feel I was a female but I still knew I had a penis. When I was little and thought, “Well, I’ll be a good boy,” I always knew I was a girl; I knew that, you know. Or when I had a penis, all I had to do was spread my legs and there I was a female, you know, but when I’m walking [toward a break-in] and I have my male’s clothes on . . .
S. Do you have a penis?
G. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve got a tongue.
S. That’s what I mean: it doesn’t have anything to do with the penis.