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In the seventh chapter Anna Freud continues her discussion of denial. She points out that even though the ability to test reality is not impaired in the young child, it can ‘get rid of unwelcome facts by denying them’ (89, 83)1, using this capacity not only in its thought and fantasy, but also in action. The child's ego uses ‘all manner of external objects in dramatizing its reversal of real situations’ (89, 83). Denying reality is a strong motive in children's play and in games involving play-acting. Anna Freud recalls A.A. Milne's When We Were Very Young, citing the three-year-old who, when he sits on the first chair, is an explorer, on the second a lion, on a third a ship's captain, but who, on the fourth chair, a child's high chair, tries to pretend that he is just a little boy. It is easier to construct a pleasant world of fantasy, she says, than to take in the facts of reality.
Adults commonly reverse the real facts when dealing with children, for example telling a small child that he is a big boy. They use such reversals of reality to comfort the child. Similarly, many presents given to children involve the same reversal, and help the child to pretend to be grown up. Educators have the problem of how much they must encourage the child to assimilate reality and how far they can allow the child to turn from reality to the world of fantasy.