Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/277

 that?” The analogy to the horse of “little John” which raised such disturbance with its legs, is very surprising.

With this last performance the solving of the problem seemed to rest entirely, at least the parents found no opportunity to make any pertinent observations. That the problem should come to a standstill just here is not at all surprising, for this is really its most difficult part. Moreover we know from experience that not very many children go beyond these limits during the period of childhood. The problem is almost too difficult for the childish reason, which still lacks much irremissible knowledge without which the problem cannot be solved.

This standstill lasted about five months during which no phobias or other signs of complex elaboration appeared. After the lapse of this time there appeared premonitory signs of some new incidents. Anna’s family lived at that time in the country near a lake where the mother and children could bathe. As Anna feared to wade farther into the water than kneedeep, her father once put her into the water, which led to an outburst of crying. In the evening while going to bed Anna asked her mother, “Do you not believe that father wanted to drown me?” A few days later there was another outburst of crying. She continued to stand in the gardener’s way until he finally placed her in a newly dug hole. Anna cried bitterly and afterwards maintained that the gardener wished to bury her. To finish up with, Anna awoke during the night with fearful crying. Her mother went to her in the adjoining room and quieted her. Anna dreamed that “a train passed and then fell in a heap.”

We have here repeated the “stage coach” of “little John.” These incidents showed clearly enough that there was again fear in the air, i.e., that there again had arisen a resistance against the transposition on the parents, and that therefore a larger part of the love was converted into fear. This time suspicion was directed not against the mother, but against the father, who she was sure must know the secret, but would never let anything out. What could the father be secreting or doing? To the child this secret appeared as something dangerous, so that she felt the worst might be expected from the father. (This feeling of childish anxiety with the father as object we see again most distinctly in adults, especially in dementia præcox, which lifts the veil of obscurity from many unconscious processes, as though it were following psychanalytic principles.) It was for this reason that Anna apparently came to the very absurd conclusion that her father wanted to drown her. At the same time her fear contained the thought that the object of the father had some relation to a dangerous