Name: Ann Louise Wildebeast
Re: WEAKNESS
In Care of: Dr. Sue
History: Her earliest complete memory is of sticking her hand in an electrical socket. She has a theory about electricity. Little people are living in the walls. Their job is to make the toaster hot although they aren't getting paid for it. They need to run very fast out from the wall through the cord to get around. She speculates that perhaps they are angry people or else they are selfless and active. At least, they know things about appliances that she doesn't. She watches her mother plugging and unplugging the toaster at breakfast. Her mother "does this for safety," she claims.
She reports that when she was three or four, she noticed the cover missing from an electrical socket in her apartment complex hallway. She seized upon an opportunity. Would she be able to meet the people in the wall? Would she be the first? Did anyone else know that there was a "way in" or was she the only one? These were the thoughts which crammed her small mind. She stuck her fingers into the socket as far as they could go and jumped back from the electric shock: "It hurt worse than anything--it crawled up my arm. I could hardly feel it."
Since this incident, she has decided the people in the wall don't want her company. Perhaps it was rude of her to intrude; in any case, she expresses concern that they "know her." Though she recognizes the need to live with electricity, she walks on the other side of the hallway from outlets as much as possible. But I wonder why she thinks this way? She could have decided those little people were bastards. Perhaps they were sarcastic and unfriendly and not worth getting to know. I wonder now if this experience may have altered her infant personality or if her thoughts both before and after were all part of the same piece. In any case, it strikes me that through this event, a fracture, a weak juncture has been introduced into her thinking.