Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

After this intermezzo Anna slept quietly until morning. In the morning her mother asked her what she had dreamed. She did not at first recall anything, and then said: "I dreamed that I could make the summer, and then some one threw a Punch[146] down into the closet."

This peculiar dream apparently has two different scenes which are separated by "then." The second part draws its material from the recent wish to possess a Punch, that is, to have a boy doll just as mama has a little boy. Some one threw Punch down into the closet; one often lets other things fall down into the water closet. It is just like this that the children, too, come out. We have here an analogy to the "Lumpf-theory" of little Hans.[147] Whenever several scenes are found in one dream, each scene ordinarily represents a particular variation of the complex elaboration. Here accordingly the first part is only a variation of the theme found in the second part. The meaning of "to see the spring" or "to see the little flowers come out" we have already remarked. Anna now dreams that she can make the summer, that is she can bring it about that the little flowers shall come out. She herself can make a little child, and the second part of the dream represents this just as one makes a motion in the w.c. Here we find the egoistic wish which is behind the seemingly objective interest of the previous night's conversation.

A few days later the mother was visited by a lady who expected soon to become a mother. The children seemed to take no interest in the matter, but the next day they amused themselves with the following play which was directed by the elder girl; they took all the newspapers they could find in their father's paper-basket and stuffed them under their clothes, so that the imitation was unmistakable. During the night little Anna had another dream: "I dreamed about a woman in the city; she had a very big stomach." The chief actor in a dream is always the dreamer himself under some definite aspect; thus the childish play of the day before is fully solved.

Not long after, Anna surprised her mother with the following performance: She stuck her doll under her clothes, then pulled it out slowly head downwards, and at the same time remarked, "Look, the baby is coming out, now it is all out." By this means Anna tells her mother, "You see, thus I apprehend the problem of birth. What do you think of it? Is that right?" The play is really meant to be a question, for, as we shall see later, this idea had to be officially confirmed. That rumination on this problem by no means ended here, is shown by the occasional ideas conceived during the following weeks. Thus she repeated the same play a few days later with her Teddy Bear, who stands in the relation of an especially beloved doll. One day, looking at a rose, she said to her grandmother, "See, the rose is getting a baby." As her grandmother did not quite understand her, she pointed to the enlarged calyx and said, "Don't you see it is quite fat here?"

Anna once quarrelled with her younger sister, and the latter exclaimed angrily, "I will kill you." Whereupon Anna answered, "When I am dead you will be all alone; then you will have to pray to God for a live baby." But the scene soon changed: Anna was the angel, and the younger sister was forced to kneel before her and pray to her that she should present to her a living child. In this way Anna became the child-dispensing mother.

Oranges were once served at table. Anna impatiently asked for one and said, "I am going to take an orange and swallow it all down into my stomach, and then I shall get a baby." Who does not think here of fairy tales in which childless women become pregnant by swallowing fruit, fish, and similar things?[148] In this way Anna sought to solve the problem how the children actually come into the mother. She thus enters into a formulation which hitherto had not been defined with so much clearness. The solution follows in the form of an analogy, which is quite characteristic of the archaic thinking of the child. (In the adult, too, there is a kind of thinking by metaphor which belongs to the stratum lying immediately below consciousness; dreams bring the analogies to the surface; the same may be observed also in dementia præcox.) In German as well as in numerous foreign fairy tales one frequently finds such characteristic childish comparisons. Fairy tales seem to be the myths of the child, and therefore contain among other things the mythology which the child weaves concerning the sexual processes. The spell of the fairy tale poetry, which is felt even by the adult, is explained by the fact that some of the old theories are still alive in our unconscious minds. We experience a strange, peculiar and familiar feeling when a conception of our remotest youth is again stimulated. Without becoming conscious it merely sends into consciousness a feeble copy of its original emotional strength.

The problem how the child gets into the mother was difficult to solve. As the only way of taking things into the body is through the mouth, it could evidently be assumed that the mother ate something like a fruit, which then grows inside her. But then comes another difficulty, namely, it is clear enough what the mother produces, but it is not yet clear what the father is good for.

What does the father do? Anna now occupied herself exclusively with this question. One morning she ran into the parents' bedroom while they were dressing, she jumped into her father's bed, lay face downwards, kicked with her legs and called at the same time, "Look! does papa do that?" The analogy to the horse of "little Hans" which raised such disturbance with its legs, is very surprising.

With this last performance the problem seemed to be at rest entirely, at least the parents found no opportunity to make any pertinent observations. That the problem should come to a standstill just here is not at all surprising, for this is really its most difficult part. Moreover, we know from experience that not many children go beyond these limits during the period of childhood. The problem is almost too difficult for the childish mind, which still lacks much knowledge necessary to its solution.

This standstill lasted about five months, during which no phobias or other signs of complex-elaboration appeared. After this lapse of time there appeared premonitory signs of some new incidents. Anna's family lived at that time in the country near a lake where the mother and children could bathe. As Anna was afraid to wade farther into the water than knee-deep, her father once put her into the water, which led to an outburst of crying. In the evening while going to bed Anna asked her mother, "Do you not believe that father wanted to drown me?" A few days later there was another outburst of crying. She continued to stand in the gardener's way until he finally placed her in a newly dug hole. Anna cried bitterly, and afterwards maintained that the gardener wished to bury her. Finally she awoke during the night with fearful crying. Her mother went to her in the adjoining room and quieted her. She had dreamed that "a train passed and then fell in a heap."