Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/264

 the correctness or incorrectness of our observations be affirmed. We may err, as all human beings err. But the continual holding up to us of our mistakes,—perhaps they are worse than mistakes,—does not help us to see things more distinctly. We should prefer to see wherein we err. That should be shown to us in our own sphere of experience. Thus far, however, no one has succeeded in meeting us on our own ground, and in giving us a different conception of the things which we ourselves see. We must still complain that our critics are persisting in complete ignorance and without the slightest notion about the matters in question. The only reason for this is that our critics have never taken the trouble to become thoroughly acquainted with our method; had they done this they would have understood us.

The little girl to whose sagacity and intellectual vivacity we are indebted for the following observations is a healthy, lively child of emotional temperament. She has never been seriously ill, and never, even in the realm of the nervous system, had there been observed any symptoms prior to this investigation. In the report which will now follow we shall have to waive a connected description, for it is made up of anecdotes which treat of one out of a whole cycle of similar experiences, and which cannot, therefore, be arranged scientifically and systematically, but must rather be described somewhat in the form of a story. This manner of description we cannot as yet dispense with in our analytic psychology, for we are still far from being able in all cases to separate with unerring certainty the curious from the typical.

When the little daughter, whom we will call Anna, was about 3 years old, she once had the following conversation with her grandmother:

Anna: “Grandma, why have you such withered eyes?”

Grandma: “Because I am old?”

A. “But you will become young again.”

G. “No, do you know, I shall become older and older, and then I shall die.”

A. “Well, and then?”

G. “Then I shall become an angel.”

A. “And then will you again become a little child?”

The child found here a welcome opportunity for the provisional solution of a problem. For some time before she had been in the habit of asking her mother whether she would ever have a living doll, a little child, a little brother. This naturally included the question as to the origin of children. As such questions appeared only spontaneously and indirectly, the parents attached no significance to them, but received