The dependent male is engaged in a constant struggle to salvage his self esteem. He may attempt to deny his weakness by acting out its opposite, a compensatory striving power. Dependency strivings and power strivings can thus be considered opposite sides of the same coin. The power driven dependent male is over-competitive and structures relationships with other men in terms of dominance-submission. These relationships are symbolically placed in a male female context that is, the weaker male is forced to submit as a woman to the stronger male. For this reason, a failure in competitive performance may suddenly find paranoid expression as a fear of homosexual assault. For example, a patient who was involved in a hostile, competitive transference began to complain that every afternoon a few minutes before his interview he began to suffer a foul taste in his mouth that lasted throughout the hour and disappeared only after he left the therapist's office. This symptom remained unexplained for several weeks until its meaning became clear in a nightmare:

I was sitting on a toilet moving my bowels. It was not an ordinary kind of a toilet. It had a queer tubular shape. As a matter of fact, it was shaped like a penis. I flushed the toilet, but instead of the water going down, it shot up like a geyser. I tried to get off but I could not. Suddenly, I felt something in my mouth and I spat out several brown pellets that I realized were feces. I woke up, terribly frightened, with that awful taste in my mouth.

The foul taste was a hysterical expression of his fear of anal rape, the symbol of competitive defeat by the therapist. The fear disguises a wish for the very act he rejects, because by it he would magically incorporate the therapist's more powerful penis. The oral symptom in this instance is especially interesting since the homosexual attack in the dream is an anal one; usually such a symptom is related to fellatio. The symptom disappeared immediately upon interpretation of the dream.

These are the interactions between the dependent male and his social environment that recapitulate the infantile castration and revive in him the infantile reparative fantasies of incorporating a stronger man's penis. These fantasies, motivationally, need have nothing to do with homosexuality, but because mechanically they involve a physical act that can also be used for homosexual purposes, they serve only to accentuate the anxiety they were designed to dissipate. It is a case of the cure being worse than the disease. A pertinent example is that of a patient who complained of repetitive fantasies in which he performed fellatio always on the same man, his uncle. These fantasies produced a most unpleasant affect and led to self referential ideas of femininity. It was possible in therapy to pinpoiI1lt the occurrence of the fantasies in relation to the situation that provoked them. The patient was a young executive who had risen quickly to a position of prominence in a giant business organization. He was instrumental in the procurement of new business, and it was at these times, when success or failure was in balance and the pressure upon him was great, that the fantasies appeared. The choice of the uncle as the magical donor was not accidental. The patient was a short man, only five feet six, while the uncle was six feet three and a fabulously successful business tycoon to boot.

One final example will serve to nail down with remarkable clarity the interrelationships between social goals, failure of performance, and magical repair. It is the dream of a college instructor who lost out to a younger rival in promotion to a professorship:

I was sitting in a theater waiting for the show to begin. The management announced there was a celebrity in the audience. A man got up and went to the stage where he was introduced as a world famous figure. He got a big hand and then I realized it was my rival. I felt very depressed. Finally, the curtain went up and it was a burlesque act, a chase. A small comedian with baggy pants came running from the wing carrying a small wooden sword in his hand. After him came a bigger man with a bigger sword, and after him came a still bigger man with a still bigger sword. Suddenly, the second man goosed the first man with his sword and it came out in front pushing up the small man's pants just like a penis. The audience thought this was terribly funny and roared with laughter. Then the third man goosed the second, but the sword, instead of coming out in the second man's pants, came out like a huge penis in the first man's pants. Now the audience really laughed. This was even funnier. I woke up laughing.

Here, again, the competitive defeat is perceived as a homosexual attack, but at the same time it is turned to reparative use through the magical acquisition of the victorious opponent's penis. The patient resorts to laughter, a mechanism of denial, to disguise his humiliation.