Page:The theory of psychoanalysis (IA theoryofpsychoan00jungiala).pdf/134

 moral law is not merely an evil, which has to be resisted, but a necessity, born out of the utmost needs of humanity. The moral law is only an outward manifestation of the innate human impulse to dominate and tame oneself. The origin of the impulse towards domestication or civilization is lost in the unfathomable depths of the history of evolution, and can never be conceived as the consequence of certain laws imposed from without. Man himself, obeying his instincts, created laws. Therefore, we shall never understand the reasons for the repression of sexuality in the child if we only take into account the moral influences of education. The main reasons are to be found much deeper, in human nature itself, in its perhaps tragic contradiction between civilization and nature, or between individual consciousness and the general conscience of the community. I cannot enter into these questions now; in my other work, I have tried to do so. Naturally, it would be of no value to give a child a notion of the higher philosophical aspects of the problem; that would probably not have the slightest effect.

The child wants, first of all, to be relieved from the idea that she is doing wrong in being interested in the generation of life. By the analytic explanation of this complex it is made clear to the child how much pleasure and curiosity she really takes in the problem of generation, and how her groundless fear is the inversion of her repressed desire. The affair of her masturbation meets with a tolerant understanding and the discussion is limited to drawing the child's attention to the aimlessness of her action. At the same time it is explained to her that her sexual actions are mainly the consequences of her curiosity, which might be satisfied in a better way. Her great fear of her father corresponds, probably, with as great an expectation, which, in consequence of the birth of her little brother, is closely connected with the problem of generation. Through this explanation, the child is declared to be justified in her curiosity and the greater part of her moral conflict is eliminated.

Fourth Interview. The little girl is now much nicer and much more confiding. Her former unnatural and constrained manner has vanished. She brings a dream which she dreamed after the last sitting. It runs: "I am as tall as a church-tower and can see into every house. At my feet are very small children, as