CHAPTER 1
PSYCHIC CONFLICTS IN A CHILD
1 About the time when Freud published his report on the case of "Little Hans," I received from a father who was acquainted with psychoanalysis a series of observations concerning his little daughter, then four years old.
2 These observations have so much that bears upon, and supplements, Freud's report on "Little Hans" that I cannot refrain from making this material accessible to a wider public. The widespread incomprehension, not to say indignation, with which "Little Hans" was greeted, was for me an additional reason for publishing my material, although it is nothing like as extensive as that of "Little Hans." Nevertheless, it contains points which seem to confirm how typical the case of "Little Hans" is. So-called "scientific" criticism, so far as it has taken any notice at all of these important matters, has once more proved overhasty, seeing that people have still not learned first to examine and then to judge.
3 The little girl to whose sagacity and intellectual sprightliness we are indebted for the following observations is a healthy, lively child of emotional temperament. She has never been seriously ill, nor had she ever shown any trace of "nervous" symptoms.
4 Livelier systematic interests awakened in the child about her third year; she began to ask questions and to spin wishful fantasies. In the report which now follows we shall, unfortunately, have to give up the idea of a consistent exposition, for it is made up of anecdotes which treat of one isolated experience out of a whole cycle of similar ones, and which cannot, therefore, be dealt with scientifically and systematically, but must rather take the form of a story. We cannot dispense with this mode of exposition in the present state of our psychology, for we are still a long way from being able in all cases to separate with unerring certainty what is curious from what is typical.
5 When the child, whom we will call Anna, was about three years old, she had the following conversation with her grandmother:
"Granny, why are your eyes so dim?"
"Because I am old."
"But you will become young again?"
"Oh dear, no. I shall become older and older, and then I shall die."
"And what then?"
"Then I shall be an angel."
"And then you will be a baby again?"
6 The child found here a welcome opportunity for the provisional solution of a problem. For some time she had been in the habit of asking her mother whether she would ever have a real live doll, a baby brother, which naturally gave rise to the question of where babies come from. As such questions were asked quite spontaneously and unobtrusively, the parents attached no significance to them, but responded to them as lightly as the child herself seemed to ask them. Thus one day she was told the pretty story that children are brought by the stork. Anna had already heard somewhere a slightly more serious version, namely that children are little angels who live in heaven and are then brought down by the said stork. This theory seems to have be' come the point of departure for the little one's investigating activities. From the conversation with the grandmother it could be seen that this theory was capable of wide application; for it solved in a comforting manner not only the painful thought of dying, but at the same time the riddle of where children come from. Anna seemed to be saying to herself: "When somebody dies he becomes an angel, and then he becomes a child." Solutions of this sort, which kill at least two birds with one stone, used to be tenaciously adhered to even in science, and cannot be undone in the child's mind without a certain amount of shock. In this simple conception there lie the seeds of the reincarnation theory, which, as we know, is still alive today in millions of human beings.
7 Just as the birth of a little sister was the turning point in the history of "Little Hans," so in this case it was the arrival of a baby brother, which took place when Anna had reached the age of four. The problem of where children come from, hardly touched upon so far, now became topical. The mother's pregnancy had apparently passed unnoticed; that is to say, Anna had never made any observations on this subject. On the evening before the birth, when labour pains were just beginning, the child found herself in her father's room. He took her on his knee and said, "Tell me, what would you say if you got a little brother tonight?" "I would kill him," was the prompt answer. The expression "kill" looks very alarming, but in reality it is quite harmless, for "kill" and "die" in child language only mean to "get rid of," either actively or passively, as has already been pointed out a number of times by Freud. I once had to treat a fifteen-year-old girl who, under analysis, had a recurrent association, and kept on thinking of Schiller's "Song of the Bell." She had never really read the poem, but had once glanced through it, and could only remember something about a cathedral tower. She could recall no further details. The passage goes:
From the tower
The bell-notes fall
Heavy and sad
For the funeral....
Alas it is the wife and mother,
Little wife and faithful mother,
Whom the dark prince of the shadows
Snatches from her spouse's arms....
8 She naturally loved her mother dearly and had no thought of her death, but on the other hand the present position was this: she had to go away with her mother for five weeks, staying with relatives; the year before, the mother had gone by herself, and the daughter (an only and spoilt child) was left at home alone with her father. Unfortunately this year it was the "little wife" who was being snatched from the arms of her spouse, whereas the daughter would greatly have preferred the "faithful mother" to be parted from her child.
9 On the lips of a child, therefore, "kill" is a perfectly harmless expression, especially when one knows that Anna used it quite promiscuously for all possible kinds of destruction, removal, demolition, etc. All the same this tendency is worth noting. (Compare the analysis of "Little Hans.")
10 The birth occurred in the early morning. When all traces of the birth had been removed, together with the bloodstains, the father went into the room where Anna slept. She awoke as he entered. He told her the news of the arrival of a little brother, which she took with a surprised and tense expression on her face. The father then picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. Anna threw a rapid glance at her rather wan-looking mother and then displayed something like a mixture of embarrassment and suspicion, as if thinking, "What's going to happen now?" She evinced hardly any pleasure at the sight of the new arrival, so that the cool reception she gave it caused general disappointment. For the rest of the morning she kept very noticeably away from her mother; this was the more striking, as normally she was always hanging around her. But once, when her mother was alone, she ran into the room, flung her arms round her neck and whispered hurriedly, "Aren't you going to die now?"
11 Something of the conflict in the child's soul is now revealed to us. The stork theory had obviously never caught on properly, but the fruitful rebirth hypothesis undoubtedly had, according to which a person helps a child into life by dying. Mama ought therefore to die. Why, then, should Anna feel any pleasure over the new arrival, of whom she was beginning to feel childishly jealous anyway? Hence, she had to assure herself at a favourable opportunity whether Mama was going to die or not. Mama did not die. With this happy issue, however, the rebirth theory received a severe setback. How was it now possible to explain little brother's birth and the origins of children in general? There still remained the stork theory, which, though never expressly rejected, had been implicitly waived in favour of the rebirth hypothesis. 3 The next attempts at explanation unfortunately remained hidden from the parents, as the child went to stay with her grandmother for a few weeks. From the latter's report, however, it appears that the stork theory was much discussed, there being of course a tacit agreement to support it.
12 When Anna returned home she again displayed, on meeting her mother, the same mixture of embarrassment and suspicion as after the birth. The impression was quite explicit to both parents, though not explicable. Her behaviour towards the baby was very nice. Meantime a nurse had arrived, who made a deep impression on little Anna with her uniform—an extremely negative impression at first, as she evinced the greatest hostility towards her in all things. Thus nothing would induce her to let herself be undressed in the evenings and put to bed by this nurse. The reason for this resistance soon became clear in a stormy scene by the bedside of the little brother, when Anna shouted at the nurse, "That's not your little brother, he is mine!" Gradually, however, she became reconciled to the nurse and began to play nurse herself; she had to have her white cap and apron, nursing her little brother and her dolls in turn. In contrast to her former mood the present one was unmistakably elegiac and dreamy. She often sat for hours crouched under the table singing long stories to herself and making rhymes, partly incomprehensible, but consisting partly of wishful fantasies on the "nurse" theme ("I am a nurse of the green cross"), and partly of distinctly painful feelings which were struggling for expression.
13 Here we meet with an important new feature in the little one's life: reveries, the first stirrings of poetry, moods of an elegiac strain—all of them things which are usually to be met with only at a later phase of life, at a time when the youth or maiden is preparing to sever the family tie, to step forth into life as an independent person, but is still inwardly held back by aching feelings of homesickness for the warmth of the family hearth. At such a time they begin weaving poetic fancies in order to compensate for what is lacking. To approximate the psychology of a four-year-old to that of the boy or girl approaching puberty may at first sight seem paradoxical; the affinity lies, however, not in the age but in the mechanism. The elegiac reveries express the fact that part of the love which formerly belonged, and should belong, to a real object, is now introverted, that is, it is turned inwards into the subject and there produces an increased fantasy activity. Whence comes this introversion? Is it a psychological manifestation peculiar to this period, or does it come from a conflict?
14 On this point the following episode is enlightening. Anna disobeyed her mother more and more often, saying insolently, "I shall go back to Granny!"
"But I shall be sad if you leave me."
"Ah, but you've got baby brother."
15 The mother's reaction shows us what the child was really getting at with her threats to go away again: she obviously wanted to hear what her mother would say to her proposal, what her attitude was in general, and whether the little brother had not ousted her altogether from her mother's affection. One must not, however, fall for this transparent piece of trickery. The child could see and feel perfectly well that she was not stinted of anything essential in her mother's love, despite the existence of her baby brother. The veiled reproach she levels at her mother on that score is therefore unjustified, and to the trained ear this is betrayed by the slightly affected tone of voice. One often hears similar tones even with grown-up people. Such a tone, which is quite unmistakable, does not expect to be taken seriously and obtrudes itself all the more forcibly for that reason. Nor should the reproach be taken to heart by the mother, for it is merely the forerunner of other and this time more serious resistances. Not long after the conversation narrated above, the following scene took place:
Mother: "Come, we'll go into the garden."
Anna: "You're lying to me. Watch out if you're not telling the truth!"
Mother: "What are you thinking of? Of course I'm telling the truth."
Anna: "No, you are not telling the truth."
Mother: "You'll soon see whether I'm telling the truth: we are going into the garden this minute."
Anna: "Is that true? You're quite sure it's true? You're not lying?"
Scenes of this kind were repeated a number of times. But this time the tone was more vehement and insistent, and also the accent on the word "lie" betrayed something special which the parents did not understand; indeed they attributed far too little significance at first to the child's spontaneous utterances. In this they were only doing what all official education does. We do not usually listen to children at any stage of their careers; in all the essentials we treat them as non compos mentis and in all the unessentials they are drilled to the perfection of automatons. Behind resistances there always lies a question, a conflict, of which we hear soon enough at another time and on another occasion. But usually we forget to connect the thing heard with the resistances. Thus, on another occasion, Anna faced her mother with the awkward questions:
"I want to be a nurse when I grow up."
"That's what I wanted to be when I was a child."
"Why aren't you a nurse, then?"
"Well, because I am a mother instead, and so I have children of my own to nurse."
Anna (thoughtfully): "Shall I be a different woman from you? Shall I live in a different place? Shall I still talk with you?"
17 The mother's answer again shows where the child's question was leading. Anna would obviously like to have a child to nurse, just as the nurse has. Where the nurse got the child from is quite clear, and Anna could get a child in the same way when she grew up. Why then wasn't Mama such a nurse—that is, how did she get the child if she didn't get it in the same way as the nurse? Anna could get a child just as the nurse had done, but how all that was going to be different in the future, or rather how she was going to be like her mother in the matter of getting children, was not so easy to see. Hence the thoughtful question "Shall I be a different woman from you?" Shall I be different in every way? The stork theory is evidently no good, the dying theory no less so, therefore one gets a child as the nurse, for example, got hers. In this natural way she, too, could get one; but how about the mother, who is no nurse and yet has children? Looking at the matter from this angle, Anna asks, '"Why aren't you a nurse?"—meaning: why haven't you got your child in the plain, straightforward, natural way? This strangely indirect mode of interrogation is typical and may be connected with the child's hazy grasp of the problem, unless we are to assume a certain "diplomatic vagueness" prompted by a desire to evade direct questioning. Later we shall find evidence of this possibility.
18 Anna is therefore confronted with the question "Where does the child come from?" The stork did not bring it; Mama did not die; nor did Mama get it in the same way as the nurse. She has, however, asked this question before and was informed by her father that the stork brings children; but this is definitely not so, she has never been deceived on this point. Therefore Papa and Mama and all the others lie. This readily explains her mistrustful attitude at the birth and the reproaches levelled against her mother. But it also explains another point, namely the elegiac reveries which we have attributed to a partial introversion. We now know the real object from which love had to be withdrawn and introverted for lack of an aim: it was withdrawn from the parents who deceived her and refused to tell her the truth. (What can this be which must not be uttered? What goes on here? Such are the parenthetic questions which the child later formulated to herself. Answer: It must be something that needs hushing up, perhaps something dangerous.) Attempts to make the mother talk and to draw out the truth by means of artful questions were futile, so resistance meets with resistance and the introversion of love begins. Naturally the capacity for sublimation in a four-year-old child is still too meagrely developed for it to render more than symptomatic service; hence she has to rely on another compensation, that is, she resorts to one of the already abandoned infantile devices for securing love by force, preferably that of crying and calling the mother at night. This had been diligently practised and exploited during her first year. It now returns and, in keeping with her age, has become well motivated and equipped with recent impressions.
