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
