however, she became reconciled to the nurse, and began to play nurse herself; she had to have her white cap and apron, and “nursed“ now her little brother, and now her doll.
In contrast to her former mood she became unmistakably mournful and dreamy. She often sat for a long time under the table singing stories and making rhymes, which were partially incomprehensible but sometimes contained the “nurse“ theme (“I am a nurse of the green cross“). Some of the stories, however, distinctly showed a painful feeling striving for expression.
Here we meet with a new and important feature in the little one's life: that is, we meet with reveries, even a tendency towards poetic fancies and melancholic attacks. All of them things which we are wont first to encounter at a later period of life, at a time when the youth or maiden is preparing to sever the family tie and to enter independently upon life, but is still held back by an inward, painful feeling of homesickness for the warmth of the parental hearth. At such a time the youth begins to replace what is lacking with poetic fancies in order to compensate for the deficiency. To approximate the psychology of a four-year-old child to that of the youth approaching puberty will at first sight seem paradoxical, the relationship lies, however, not in the age but rather in the mechanism. The elegiac reveries express the fact that a part of that love which formerly belonged, and should belong, to a real object, is now introverted, that is, it is turned unward into the subject and there produces an increased imaginative activity. What is the origin of this introversion? Is it a psychological manifestation peculiar to this age, or does it owe its origin to a conflict?
This is explained in the following occurrence. It often happened that Anna was disobedient to her mother, she was insolent, saying, “I am going back to grandma.“
Mother: “But I shall be sad when you leave me.“
Anna: “Oh, but you have my little brother.“
This reaction towards the mother shows what the little one was really aiming at with her threats to go away again; she apparently wished to hear that her mother would say to
