Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

This tallies with the "stage coach" of "little Hans." These incidents showed clearly enough that fear was again in the air, i.e. that a resistance had again arisen preventing transference to the parents, and that therefore a great part of her love was converted into fear. This time suspicion was not directed against the mother, but against the father, who she was sure must know the secret, but would never let anything out. What could the father be doing or keeping secret? To the child this secret appeared as something dangerous, so that she felt the worst might be expected from the father. (This feeling of childish anxiety with the father as object we see again most distinctly in adults, especially in dementia præcox, which lifts the veil of obscurity from many unconscious processes, as though it were following psychoanalytic principles.) It was for this reason that Anna came to the apparently absurd conclusion that her father wanted to drown her. At the same time her fear contained the thought that the object of the father had some relation to a dangerous action. This stream of thought is no arbitrary interpretation. Anna meanwhile grew a little older and her interest in her father took on a special colouring which is hard to describe. Language has no words to describe the quite unique kind of tender curiosity which shone in the child's eyes.

Anna once took marked delight in assisting the gardener while he was sowing grass, without apparently divulging the profound significance of her play. About a fortnight later she began to observe with great pleasure the young grass sprouting. On one of these occasions she asked her mother the following question: "Tell me, how did the eyes grow into the head?" The mother told her that she did not know. Anna, however, continued to ask whether God or her papa could tell this? The mother then referred her to her father, who might tell her how the eyes grew into the head. A few days later there was a family reunion at tea. When the guests had departed, the father remained at the table reading the paper and Anna also remained. Suddenly approaching her father she said, "Tell me, how did the eyes grow into the head?"

Father: "They did not grow into the head; they were there from the beginning and grew with the head."

A.: "Were not the eyes planted?"

F.: "No, they grew in the head like the nose."

A.: "Did the mouth and the ears grow in the same way? and the hair, too?"

F.: "Yes, they all grew in the same way."

A.: "And the hair, too? But the mousies came into the world naked. Where was the hair before? Aren't there little seeds for it?"

F.: "No; you see, the hair really came out of little grains which are like seeds, but these were already in the skin long before and nobody sowed them." The father was now getting concerned; he knew whither the little one's thoughts were directed, but he did not wish to overthrow, for the sake of a former false application, the opportunely established seed-theory which she had most fortunately gathered from nature; but the child spoke with an unwonted seriousness which demanded consideration.

Anna (evidently disappointed, and in a distressed tone): "But how did Freddy get into mama? Who stuck him in? and who stuck you into your mama? Where did he come out from?"