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 herself and exclaimed, “No, no, the stork brought little brother down from heaven.” She soon left the subject and again wished to see pictures of volcanoes. During the evening following this conversation she was calm. The sudden explanation produced in the child a whole series of ideas, which manifested themselves in certain questions. Unexpected perspectives were opened; she rapidly approached the main problem, namely, the question, “Where did the child come out?” Was it from a hole in the breast or from the mouth? Both suppositions are entirely qualified to form acceptable theories. We even meet with recently married women who still entertain the theory of the hole in the abdominal wall or of the Cæsarean section; this is supposed to betray a very curious form of innocence. But as a matter of fact it is not innocence, as we are always dealing in such cases with infantile sexual activities, which in later life have brought the vias naturales into ill repute.

It may be asked where the child got the absurd idea that there is a hole in the breast, or that the birth takes place through the mouth. Why did she not select one of the natural openings existing in the abdomen from which things come out daily? The explanation is simple. Very shortly before, our little one had invited some educational criticism on her mother’s part by a heightened interest in both abdominal openings with their remarkable products,—an interest not always in accord with the requirements of cleanliness and decorum. Then for the first time she became acquainted with the exceptional laws of these bodily regions and, being a sensitive child, she soon learned that there was something here to be tabooed. This region, therefore, must not be referred to. Anna had simply shown herself docile and had so adjusted herself to the cultural demands that she thought (at least spoke) of the simplest things last. The incorrect theories substituted for correct laws persisted for years until brusque explanations came from without. It is, therefore, no wonder that such theories, the forming of and adherence to which are favored even by parents and educators should later become determinants of important symptoms in a neurosis, or of delusions in a psychosis, just as I have shown that in dementia præcox what has existed in the mind for years always remains somewhere, though it may be hidden under compensations seemingly of a different kind.

But even before this question, whence the child really comes out, was settled, a new problem obtruded itself; viz., the children come out of the mother, but how is it with the nurse?