Collected Papers on Analytical PsychologyJung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Science
Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Psychoanalysis
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.
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