The paper contains some abstracts from the analysis of the case of a Russian Jew, 30, violinist and composer, who lived apart from his wife because he was afraid he might injure his only child, a baby boy aged fifteen months. He could not bear to hear it cry, yet he was worried when it was quiet and he would pinch and poke it to see if it would cry.

He used to meet his wife periodically and, although she was usually fairly punctual, he was constantly asking during the analysis 'Why does my wife come late?' The solution of this problem lay in the sexual meaning of the word 'come', for the patient was the subject of ejaculatio praecox and adjustment of the sexual life relieved him of his worry about his wife's punctuality.

He feared that masturbation in early life had rendered him impotent and it was because his son symbolized his own (castrated) phallus that he stimulated him to cry, thus satisfying himself that the child was not deficient, otherwise that he himself was not impotent.