The Castration Complex in the Nursery

Just before Christmas a patient under analysis for a psychical impotence and a feeling of being continually slighted by his equals asked my opinion as to the proper course to be pursued in connection with a little episode in the life of his four-year-old daughter. The child had for some time been the constant companion of a five-year-old boy living in the same house, and had been detected a few months previously in exhibitionism with him, for which she had been reproved by her mother. The child protested that she had been playing a game, 'playing wee-wee'.

No further notice was taken of the tendency until early in December, when the little girl had told her mother in a half-abashed, half-defiant manner that she had had 'lots of fun' with the boy companion (Arthur) 'playing wee-wee'. The mother sharply reprimanded her, asking reproachfully why she could not play other games with Arthur, such as blocks, train or tag, whereupon the little girl protested that 'wee-wee' was more fun, and upon being asked the reason for the predilection, gleefully cried out, 'Because we've got it on us, we've got it on us'.

The mother told her that it were better that she played other games. The father wished to know whether in my opinion the mother had been sufficiently firm with the child.

A few days later the little girl came home from kindergarten crying inconsolably. A Christmas festival had been planned at the kindergarten in which half the children were to represent reindeer and the other half fairies. She had been selected for the latter, whereas she wanted to be a reindeer. (I don't want to be a fairy.) The child's sobbing and gloom over the occurrence were so intense and persistent that the mother had asked the father if he did not think it advisable that she should go to the school to have the child's rôle changed. He wished my comment as to the pedagogical advisability of interceding for the child with the teacher. When I asked him why the child desired so much to be a