The difficulties on the part of the child are very great. They should not, however, be so great on the part of the parents. In many ways the parents could manage the love of children more carefully, more indulgently, and more intelligently. The sins committed against favourite children by the undue love of the parents could perhaps be avoided through a wider knowledge of the child's mind. For many reasons I find it impossible to say anything of general validity concerning the bringing up of children as it is affected by this problem. We are as yet very far from general prescriptions and rules; indeed we are still in the realm of casuistry. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the finer mental processes in the child is so meagre that we are not yet in any position to say where the greatest trouble lies, whether in the parents, in the child, or in the conception of the milieu. Only psychoanalyses of the kind that Professor Freud has published in the Jahrbuch, 1909,[141] will help us out of this difficulty. Such comprehensive and profound observations should act as a strong inducement to all teachers to occupy themselves with Freud's psychology. This psychology offers more values for practical pedagogy than the physiological psychology of the present.
Lecture III
EXPERIENCES CONCERNING THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF THE CHILD[142]
Ladies and Gentlemen: In our last lecture we saw how important the emotional processes of childhood are for later life. In to-day's lecture I should like to give you some insight into the psychic life of the child through the analysis of a four-year-old girl. It is much to be regretted that there are few among you who have had the opportunity of reading the analysis of "Little Hans" (Kleiner Hans), which was published by Freud during the current year.[143] I ought to begin by giving you the content of that analysis, so that you might be in a position to compare Freud's results with those obtained by me, and observe the marked, and astonishing similarity between the unconscious creations of the two children. Without a knowledge of the fundamental analysis of Freud, much in the report of the following case will appear strange, incomprehensible, and perhaps unacceptable to you. I beg you, however, to defer your final judgment and to enter upon the consideration of these new subjects with a kindly disposition, for such pioneer work in virgin soil requires not only the greatest patience on the part of the investigator, but also the unprejudiced attention of his audience. Because the Freudian investigations apparently involve a discussion of the most intimate secrets of sexuality many people have had a feeling of repulsion against them, and have therefore rejected everything as a matter of course without any real disproof. This, unfortunately, has almost always been the fate of Freud's doctrines up to the present. One must not come to the consideration of these matters with the firm conviction that they do not exist, for it may easily happen that for the prejudiced they really do not exist. One should perhaps assume the author's point of view for the moment and investigate these phenomena under his guidance. Only in this way can the correctness or otherwise of our observations be affirmed. We may err, as all human beings err. But the continual holding up to us of our mistakes—perhaps they are worse than mistakes—does not help us to see things more distinctly. We should prefer to see wherein we err. That should be demonstrated to us in our own sphere of experience. Thus far, however, no one has succeeded in meeting us on our own ground, nor in giving us a different conception of the things which we ourselves see. We still have to complain that our critics persist in maintaining complete ignorance about the matters in question. The only reason for this is that they have never taken the trouble to become thoroughly acquainted with our method; had they done this they would have understood us.
The little girl to whose sagacity and intellectual vivacity we are indebted for the following observations is a healthy, lively child of emotional temperament. She has never been seriously ill, and never, even in the realm of the nervous system, had there been observed any symptoms prior to this investigation. In the report which follows we shall have to waive any connected description, for it is made up of anecdotes which treat of one experience out of a whole cycle of similar ones, and which cannot, therefore, be arranged scientifically and systematically, but must rather be described somewhat in the form of a story. We cannot as yet dispense with this manner of description in our analytical psychology, for we are still far from being able in all cases to separate with unerring certainty what is curious from what is typical.
When the little daughter, whom we will call Anna, was about three years old, she once had the following conversation with her grandmother:
Anna: "Grandma, why are your eyes so dim?"
Grandma: "Because I am old."
A.: "But you will become young again."
G.: "No, do you know, I shall become older and older, and then I shall die."
A.: "Well, and then?"
G.: "Then I shall be an angel."
A.: "And then will you be a little baby again?"
The child found here a welcome opportunity for the provisional solution of a problem. For some time before she had been in the habit of asking her mother whether she would ever have a living doll, a little child, a little brother. This naturally included the question as to the origin of children. As such questions appeared only spontaneously and indirectly, the parents attached no significance to them, but responded to them as lightly and in appearance as carelessly as the child seemed to ask them. Thus she once received from her father the pretty story that children are brought by the stork. Anna had already heard somewhere a more serious version, namely, that children, are little angels living in heaven, and are brought from heaven by the stork. This theory seems to have become the starting point for the investigating activity of the little one. From the conversation with the grandmother it could be seen that this theory was capable of wide application, namely, it not only solved in a comforting manner the painful idea of parting and dying, but at the same time also the riddle of the origin of children. Such solutions which kill at least two birds with one stone were formerly tenaciously adhered to in science, and cannot be removed from the mind of the child without a certain amount of shock.
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 birth of a brother, which happened when Anna had reached the age of four years. The pregnancy of the mother apparently remained unnoticed; i.e. the child never expressed herself on this subject. On the evening before the birth, when labour pains were beginning, the child was in her father's room. He took her on his knee and said, "Tell me, what would you say if you should get a little brother to-night?" "I would kill him" was the prompt answer. The expression "to kill" looks very serious, but in reality it is quite harmless, for "to kill" and "to die" in child language signify only to remove, either in the active or in the passive sense, as has already been pointed out a number of times by Freud. "To kill" as used by the child is a harmless word, especially so when we know that the child uses the word "kill" quite promiscuously for all possible kinds of destruction, removal, demolition, etc. It is, nevertheless, worth while to note this tendency (see the analysis of Kleiner Hans, p. 5).