Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/159

 one forgets to connect the thing heard with the resistances. Thus, on another occasion, Anna put to her mother the following questions:—

Anna: “I should like to become a nurse when I grow big—why did you not become a nurse?”

Mother: “Why, as I have become a mother I have children to nurse anyway.”

A. (Reflecting): “Indeed, shall I be a lady like you, and shall I talk to you then?”

The mother’s answer again shows whither the child’s question was really directed. Apparently Anna, too, would like to have a child to “nurse” just as the nurse has. Where the nurse got the little child is quite clear. Anna, too, could get a child in the same way if she were big. Why did not the mother become such a nurse, that is to say, how did she get a child if not in the same way as the nurse? Like the nurse, Anna, too, could get a child, but how that fact might be changed in the future or how she might come to resemble her mother in the matter of getting children is not clear to her. From this resulted the thoughtful question, “Indeed, shall I be a lady like you? Shall I be quite different?” The stork theory evidently had come to naught, the dying theory met a similar fate; hence she now thinks one may get a child in the same way, as, for example, the nurse got hers. She, too, could get one in this natural way, but how about the mother who is no nurse and still has children? Looking at the matter from this point of view, Anna asks: “Why did you not become a nurse?” namely, “why have you not got your child in the natural way?” This peculiar indirect manner of questioning is typical, and evidently corresponds with the child’s hazy grasp of the problem, unless we assume a certain diplomatic uncertainty prompted by a desire to evade direct questioning. We shall later find an illustration of this possibility. Anna is evidently confronted with the question “Where does the child come from?” The stork did not bring it; mother did not die; nor did mother get it in the same way as the nurse. She has, however, asked this question before and received the information from her father that the stork brings