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When he came to me for treatment - by no means the least reason for his coming was that his mother, a religious bigot, had a horror of psycho-analysis - his jealousy of the younger brother (which had once actually been manifested as a murderous attack on the infant in its cradle) had long been forgotten. He now treated his brother with great consideration; but certain curious fortuitous actions of his (which involved sudden and severe injuries to favourite animals, like his sporting dog or birds which he had carefully reared,) were probably to be understood as echoes of these hostile impulses against the little brother.

Now this patient related that, at about the time of the attack on the baby he so much hated, he had thrown all the crockery he could lay hands on out of the window of their country house into the road-the very same thing that Goethe relates of his childhood in Dichtung und Wahrheit! I may remark that my patient was of foreign nationality and was not acquainted with German literature; he had never read Goethe’s autobiography.

This communication naturally suggested to me that an attempt might be made to explain Goethe’s childish memory on the lines forced upon us by my patient’s story. But could the necessary conditions for this explanation be shown to exist in the poet’s childhood? Goethe himself, it is true, makes the instigation of the von Ochsenstein brothers responsible for his childish prank. But from his own narrative it can be seen that these grown-up neighbours merely encouraged him to go on with what he was doing. The beginning was on his own initiative, and the reason he gives for this beginning - ‘since this (the game) seemed to lead to nothing’ - is surely, without any forcing of its meaning, a confession that at the time of writing it down and probably for many years previously he was not aware of any adequate motive for his behaviour.

It is well known that Johann Wolfgang and his sister Cornelia were the eldest survivors of a considerable family of very weakly children. Dr. Hanns Sachs has been so kind as to supply me with the following details concerning these brothers and sisters of Goethe’s, who died in childhood:

(a) Hermann Jakob, baptized Monday, November 27, 1752; reached the age of six years and six weeks; buried January 13, 1759.

(b) Katharina Elisabetha, baptized Monday, September 9, 1754; buried Thursday, December 22, 1755. (One year and four months old).

(c) Johanna Maria, baptized Tuesday, March 29, 1757, and buried Saturday, August 11, 1759. (Two years and four months old)- (This was doubtless the very pretty and attractive little girl celebrated by her brother.)

(d) Georg Adolph, baptized Sunday, June 15, 1760; buried, eight months old, Wednesday, February 18, 1761.