FATHER -- Household Activities -- Reading the paper, paying the bills, playing with the kids, are frequent activities of normal dads. DRIVING TO OR AT WORK -- Usually found in fathers who are thought of in terms of abandonment or being outside of the family, rather than an integral part of it. CUTTING -- Activities such as mowing the lawn, chopping, cutting, etc., are seen with tough castrating fathers, occasionally mothers. RIVALRY - Usually depicted as a force or action between members of the family, that is, throwing a ball, knife, airplane, etc., seen in highly competitive or jealous children. These are a few of the common actions that frequently reappear in the KFD.

Mary, a twelve-year-old girl was brought to the hospital with a repeated history of recent rape by her brother. Mary's kinetic drawing is shown in figure 159.

Note the intensity of the scribbling on Mary's body. She shows great preoccupation in this area with obvious concern and distortion in her drawing. This reflects her own concern about her body and her great anxiety in her reaction to the rape episode. Further, the scribbling or blacking out, gives us another feeling of the dynamics involved, in which Mary attempts at the same time to deny the existence of her sexuality. Note also the brother in this drawing. His body is cut off below the waist by the chair. This is another technique used by children in terms of denying or repressing areas and an inability to think about these areas.

Mike produced the following drawing (see figure 160:)

Mike was a seventeen-year-old boy brought to the hospital because of withdrawal symptoms. His father had a history of a car accident with a head injury and being extremely irritable subsequent to this. Mike felt completely isolated and rejected by the father. Note in the drawing the compartmentalization. This is a method that children use to isolate themselves from people and to deny feelings. Note the distance between Mike and the father in the drawing and his turning to the refrigerator for nurture rather than to people. Even mother, although in the kitchen has her back turned. He felt father preferred the older brother and would only approve of Mike if he were good. Mother was always there and took care of necessities, but in a detached neutral way, and was a warm person only when playing the role of mother. He was afraid of his brother and felt isolated from his sisters. It was difficult for him to say that he felt rejected, but it was also apparent that he always felt rejected. In early adolescence, the parents uprooted him and sent him to several different boarding schools, where he continued to underachieve, act out in overt delinquency and always felt shy and unattractive. His close friends were primarily among the delinquent groups in the home neighborhood and at school. All this is so well demonstrated and predicted in his drawing. The separation by compartmentalization, the cutting brother, the isolation from the parents and sisters and even his stealing of food (love?) from the refrigerator.

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