Dreaming for Freud by Sheila Kohler

her diary does not. She has never written down her fantasy or told the doctor about that! There is always a little boy in her stories and a beating.
    Over and over again she makes up this same beating fantasy sometimes with some small variations. Sometimes the fräulein wears a blue skirt and not a brown one. Sometimes she has an assistant, a young blond man whom she calls upon to beat the little boy with a stick when he is bad, or sometimes he even gives the boy an enema as punishment, but parts of the story are always the same. The little boy is always sitting in a big bay window in the sunlight when the fräulein comes bursting into the room in her long dark dress that rustles as she walks. The little boy can hear the sound of her long petticoats and see the skirt that froths like foam around her slender ankles as she comes over to him, and he knows what she will make him do as she holds him in her arms.
    Without the doctor making her feel even worse with his words, she always feels very guilty afterward, as much for the strange story she has made up as for the actual touching.
    She remembers her fräulein lying next to her on the bed once while she crossed her legs with her hand between them, her whole body trembling with pleasure. The fräulein said, “What on earth are you doing?”
    “Just scratching,” she had lied, not really aware of what she was doing, though suddenly realizing this was not acceptable behavior.
    As she thinks about it now, sitting at her desk in the late afternoon with her diary before her, she runs her hands over her body. She feels the slight swell of her new breasts, her stomach through her wool dress, the strangeness of it all. Is this me? Who is this girl? What does she want?
    She pulls up her white skirt and petticoats and slips her fingers down beneath her long underwear and between her legs and holds herself tight, holding on to herself as though she might otherwise disappear. At the same time she conjures up images:
    A boy child sits alone in the sunlight in a bay window. He hears the sound of his fräulein’s long skirts rustle as she comes into his big empty room in her brown dress. The fräulein looks around the room disapprovingly and says as she always does: “What is going on here?” which already makes the boy feel guilty though the bare room is very clean and tidy, not a toy out of place.
    “Have you been a good boy?” the fräulein asks in her accented German.
    “Oh, yes, very good,” he says, as always.
    Then she smiles at him sweetly with her large glistening mouth, her lips very red, and undoes her bodice and then her tight low-cut blouse letting her heavy breasts swing free. “Come, let me see,” she says, and she gathers him up in her arms and holds him close against her soft body. She thrusts her thick brown nipple into his mouth and tells him to suck.
    “No! No!” he says, trying to turn his face away, with disgust, but she holds him too tightly and then he does suck as he always does with more and more pleasure. When his body responds to this, she says disapprovingly, touching him in his private place, making him swell and swell, “Well, well, look at you! I don’t call that a good boy, do you? No! No! Not a good boy at all,” and she turns him over on her knees and beats him on his buttocks and tells him he is a naughty, naughty boy.
    Then the man who is usually young and fair haired and beardless like her engineering student changes in the picture into an older, dark-haired man with intense eyes, emerging from the shadows of the room. At first she thinks it might be Herr Z., but then she recognizes him with a little shiver. It is the doctor himself, looking grim and cross, piercing her with his deep disapproving gaze, grunting and straining and sweating a little in his starched white shirt and mournful bow tie as he bends over her to gather her up and hold her hard, asking her if she has been a good girl, then he is turning her over his knees, and beating