A nine-year-old boy of poor class reacted with strong anxiety when I gave him a birthday present he had wanted very much. In so far as I represented the 'good mother' he felt afraid of the father's envy; in so far as I was the 'bad mother' the present took on the significance of dangerous excrement. Thus the present roused anxiety concerning both the external and the internalized objects. Patients with a strong paranoid attitude react to severity with anxiety and to kindness with guilt which very quickly turns into anxiety; they cannot be influenced by human contact or pedagogic measures. There is a danger of an increasing detachment from objects leading often to psychosis or asocial behaviour.