Estelle Levy describes a case of stealing compulsion in a boy of eight whom she successfully treated with the technique employed by Anna Freud. In this analysis she discerns the Oedipus complex as the nuclear situation which resulted in the child's boasting and bragging to overcome his father. His castration fear resulted in the denial of the proportion of little and big son to father. The compulsive stealing was shewn to be entirely of articles which were penis symbols and which he took to indemnify himself for the renunciation of the father rôle. She points out that while her case agrees in its fundamental dynamics with that described by Alexander it differed in that the patient stole from anyone, and that his stealing, boasting and lying had their bases in his castration complex.