Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/163

 exceptional laws relating to 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 sometimes persist for years until brusque explanations come from without. It is, therefore, no wonder that such theories, the forming of and adherence to which are favoured even by parents and educationalists should later become determinants for important symptoms in a neurosis, or of delusions in a psychosis, just as I have shown that in dementia praecox what has existed in the mind for years always remains somewhere, though it may be hidden under compensations of a seemingly different kind.

But even before this question was settled as to where the child really comes out a new problem obtruded itself, viz. the children came out of the mother, but how is it with the nurse? Did some one come out of her too? This question was followed by the remark, “No, no, the stork brought down baby brother from heaven.” What is there peculiar about the fact that nobody came out of the nurse? We recall that Anna identified herself with the nurse, and planned to become a nurse later, for she, too, would like to have a child, and she could have one as well as the nurse. But now when it is known that the little brother grew in mama, how is it now?

This disquieting question is averted by a quick return to the stork-angel theory which has never been really believed and which after a few trials is at last definitely abandoned. Two questions, however, remain in the air. The first reads as follows: Where does the child come out? The second, a considerably more difficult one, reads: How does it happen that mama has children while the nurse and the servants