The reason Fred “sometimes needed” the wooden arms in my dream—or cloth puppets with plastic faces and immovable mouths—was because as a child, they had provided a safe way for him to communicate how he felt. As an only child until age eleven and often sickly, he played alone much of the time. And as a sensitive child, he tried to find safe outlets for his feelings, especially the negative ones. Later he would counsel parents to allow their children to act out their feelings through puppets, as a way to bring some distance between the children and their difficult emotions.
