[13] In Rumania the folk belief prevails that children readily wet themselves in full moonlight. (Told by a patient.)
[14] They are both passionately devoted to sports, thus also endowed with a heightened muscle erotic.
[15] Phantasy of the mother's body? The moon's disk = the woman's body?
[16] A clear coitus phantasy.
[16a] Cf. Barrie: “Dear Brutus,” Act. II. for the dream daughter, who bears the name of the author's mother. See also “Margaret Ogilvy.” The dream daughter's apostrophe to the moon is also interesting in connection with the present study. Tr.
[17] One may also think of the fear of castration, associated with the threats of parents so very frequently made when children practice masturbation.
[18] Literally, “Moonsick.” [Tr.]
[19] Has not the bringing in of these animals and of the word mooncalves a hidden closeness of meaning? The repetition twice of the same motive, the analogy with the case at the beginning which I analyzed, and at last the fact that Lena, when she looked at the stars, wanted to see a farmhouse where some one was just driving out the calves, all this gives food for thought.
[20] According to my psychoanalytic experience children who cling so to inanimate things see in them either sexual symbols or those things were once objects of their secret sexual enjoyment. It may happen, for example, that such a child falls in love with the furniture, the walls of the room, yes, even a closet, stays there by the hour, kisses the walls, tells them its joys and sorrows and hangs them with all sorts of pictures. One very often sees children talking with inanimate things. They are embarrassed and break off at once if surprised by their elders. If there were not something forbidden behind this, there would be no ground for denying what they are doing, the more so since in fairy tales beasts, plants and also inanimate things speak with mankind and with one another without the child taking offense at it. The latter first becomes confused by the same action when he is pilfering from the tree of knowledge and has something sexual to hide. Hug-Hellmuth has convincingly demonstrated the erotic connection of the child's enthusiasm for plants as well as the different synesthesias. (See her study, “Über Farbenhören,” Imago, Vol. I, pp. 218 ff. Abstracted in Psa. Rev., Vol. II, No. 1, January, 1915.)
[21] One thinks of Eisener's panegyric: “Before her clear look confusion cannot exist, the coarse word of insolence sinks back unspoken into the shame filled breast. The brightness of a lost paradise shines from her eyes upon the fallen bringing pain and warning, the consolation of eternal pity smiles upon the penitent.”