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This short paper is supposed to explain the origin of the writer's 'depressed attitude towards the world', and at the same time to indicate how this attitude was removed.
It appears that during a self-analysis the writer came upon a memory, 'after overcoming very strong resistances', of reaching up towards a woman's breasts when sitting on her knee at the age of about eleven or fourteen months. The woman repulsed him by hitting him 'violently' on his arms and hands. Considering that at that time he had not reacted properly to the woman's violence, 'he went for the punching-ball standing in his study, endeavouring to imagine it might be the woman, and hit it repeatedly with very great violence—about three times harder than he had ever hit it before in punching practice'. After thus giving vent to the 'repressed emotion associated with the incident described', he 'then had a very much more cheerful outlook on life than before'. The writer is evidently a great believer in the old idea of 'abreaction'.
The only thing of interest to analysts in this paper—provided the incident recorded above is a real one and not a phantasy—is the extraordinary reaction with violence of a woman towards a babe on her knee who had inadvertently stimulated her castration complex by stretching up its hands towards her breasts.