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Dr. Behn-Eschenburg describes some incidents in the life of a girl infant, recorded by her mother, and discusses current questions, including the ætiological relations of the Oedipus complex to the neuroses, the time
of onset of the complex and the factors affecting the feminine change of object from mother to father, in the light of these observations.
This little girl indicated that she had already changed her object (the most easily observable index of onset of the Oedipus situation) at the age of two and a half years. While helping the maid to make the parents' beds one morning she forbade her to push them together when finished. To the maid's objection that if not pushed together one might fall into the space between the two she replied that then, when mother was dead, she would sleep in her bed. At 17 months the baby had first encountered a naked boy on the bathing beach. She sat down and gazed at his organ for a long time and then began to search herself, uttering meanwhile the little whimper which was her usual way of announcing that all was not well. Two months later a boy cousin of ten months came to stay and her things were used for him. She watched everything with close attention, insisting on being present when he was bathed, studying and trying to touch his organ. For the first time she shewed marked signs of jealousy, trying to keep everyone away from her mother and refusing to share her toys. On a subsequent visit she threw a glass ball which she used to press between her legs and sit on, at the cousin's head, narrowly missing him. By 2½ years, when another cousin (five months) came to stay, these preoccupations seem to have been successfully repressed. Her reactions to this baby were positive and helpful but she remarked on all the things he could not do, he could not walk or run and had no teeth. She shewed great discomfort however when she first saw him suckled, did not want to look and asked no questions. Her attitude to her mother,