Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/186

 death, but arrived when he was already dead. Her terror and grief were very great.

In the days following the death she thought much about it all, wondering why her father had to meet his end so abruptly. In the midst of such meditations it suddenly occurred to her that the last words she had heard her father say were: “I also am one of those who have fallen from the cart into the devil’s clutches.” The remembrance filled her with grief, and she recalled how often her father had sworn savagely. She wondered then whether there really were a life after death, and whether her father were in heaven or hell. During these musings she came across the tracts and began to read them, getting to the place where it said that swearers go to hell. Then came upon her great fear and terror; she overwhelmed herself with reproaches, she ought to have stopped her father’s swearing, deserved punishment for her neglect. She would die and would be condemned to hell. Henceforth she was full of sorrow, moody, tormented her husband with this obsessive idea, and renounced all joy and happiness.

The patient’s life-history (reproduced partly in her own words) is as follows:—

She is the youngest of five brothers and sisters and was always her father’s favourite. The father gave her everything she wanted if he possibly could. For instance, if she wanted a new dress and her mother refused it, she could be sure her father would bring her one next time he went to town. The mother died rather early. At twenty-four the patient married the man of her choice, against her father’s wishes. The father simply disapproved of her choice although he had nothing particular against the man. After the wedding she made her father come and live with them. That seemed a matter of course, she said, since the other relations had never suggested having him with them. The father was a quarrelsome swearer and drunkard. Husband and father-in-law, as may easily be imagined, got on extremely badly together. The patient would always meekly fetch her father spirits from the inn, although this gave rise perpetually to anger and altercations. But she finds her husband “all