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All the same, we are not blind to the objections - apart from any internal uncertainties - against basing the interpretation of a childhood act on a single parallel. For this reason I had for years kept back my theory about the little scene in Dichtung und Wahrheit. Then one day I had a patient who began his analysis with the following remarks, which I set down word for word: ‘I am the eldest of a family of eight or nine children.¹ One of my earliest recollections is of my father sitting on the bed in his night-shirt, and telling me laughingly that I had a new brother. I was then three and three-quarters years old; that is the difference in age between me and my next younger brother. I know, too, that a short time after (or was it a year before?)²I threw a lot of things, brushes - or was it only one brush? - shoes and other things, out of the window into the street. I have a still earlier recollection. When I was two years old, I spent a night with my parents in a hotel bedroom at Linz on the way to the Salzkammergut. I was so restless in the night and made such a noise that my father had to beat me. ’

After hearing this statement I threw all doubts to the winds. When in analysis two things are brought out one immediately after the other, as though in one breath, we have to interpret this proximity as a connection of thought. It was, therefore, as if the patient had said, ‘Because I found that I had got a new brother, I shortly afterwards threw these things into the street.’ The act of flinging the brushes, shoes and so on, out of the window must be recognized as a reaction to the birth of the brother. Nor is it a matter for regret that in this instance the objects thrown out were not crockery but other things, probably, anything the child could reach at the moment. - The hurling out (through the window into the street) thus proves to be the essential thing in the act, while the pleasure in the smashing and the noise, and the class of object on which ‘execution is done’, are variable and unessential points.

Naturally, the principle of there being a connection of thought must be applied as well to the patient’s third childish recollection, which is the earliest, though it was put at the end of the short series. This can easily be done. Evidently the two-year-old child was so restless because he could not bear his parents being in bed together. On the journey it was no doubt impossible to avoid the child being a witness of this. The feelings which were aroused at that time in the jealous little boy left him with an embitterment against women which persisted and permanently interfered with the development of his capacity for love.

¹ A momentary error of a striking character. It was probably induced by the influence of the intention, which was already showing itself, to get rid of a brother. (Cf. Ferenczi, 1912, ‘On Transitory Symptoms during Analysis’.)

² This doubt, attaching to the essential point of the communication for purposes of resistance, was shortly afterwards withdrawn by the patient of his own accord.