d explains his therapy methods to his patient, and indirectly to his readers as well. In this manner, we learn that Freud gleans most of his information from free association, encouraging his patient to say all things that entered his mind, including those things he found unpleasant or suspected might lack relevance. Having set forth a basic summation of the case material and the nature of the sessions, Freud turns to the earliest sessions. He follows a chronological progression through most of the paper, bringing in relevant material from past sessions and displaying his analytic thought processes with stark clarity.
             Freud writes, "the true technique of psychoanalysis requires the physician to suppress his curiosity and leaves the patient the complete freedom in choosing the order in which topics will succeed each other during treatment (p. 19)."
             True to his word, the journey through the Rat Man's case begins with the material brought first by the patient. The Rat Man opens by describing his earlier sexual life, in which he explored the naked female form in interaction with some of his governesses. He claims that these women allowed him to fondle them and view them undressing at the Baths. But in developing his ideas further, Freud finds a foreshadowing of his notion of superego and his upcoming structural theory within the patient's words. The Rat Man states, "I used to have the morbid idea that my parents knew my thoughts (p. 8)." Freud explores several events in which figures in the Rat Man's early life made him feel small and that his sexual impulses were unacceptable.
             These basic conflicts framed some of his compulsions in a sexual light. But Freud also paid close attention to the workings of the aggressive drive and the patient's obsessive thoughts about a wish that something awful would happen to a loved one. The patient often prohibited his sexual curiosities with the thought that they h...