Three triangles hover above four stepped lines (I, II, III, IV).

These lines represent four stages in the uncovering of the traumatic scene, each more deeply repressed than the last.

The three triangles represent the scene of analysis, in which only the patient’s symptoms are visible—not the underlying trauma they encode.

On the left side of the drawing, Freud writes “scenes, depth of repression.”

Dashed red lines, side-by-side the black ink lines, show the analytic work of looping down ever deeper to the site of trauma.

On the right side of the drawing, Freud has scrawled the word Arbeit (work).

At the bottom of the drawing, Freud has added an explanatory note: “Work consists of a number of such stages at deeper and deeper levels.”