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I find myself for a moment in the interesting position of not knowing whether what I have to say ought to be regarded as something long familiar and obvious or as something entirely new and puzzling. But I am inclined to think the latter.
It has at last struck me that the youthful ego of the person whom we have come to know as an analytical patient tens of years later behaved in a remarkable manner in certain particular situations of pressure. We can assign the conditions under which this comes about in general and somewhat vague terms by saying that it occurs under the influence of a psychic trauma. I prefer to select a single sharply defined special case, though it certainly does not cover all the possible modes of causation.
Let us suppose, then, that a child's ego is under the sway of a powerful instinctual demand which it is accustomed to satisfy and that it is suddenly frightened by an experience which teaches it that the continuance of this satisfaction will result in an almost intolerable danger. It must now decide either to recognize the real danger, submit to it and do without the instinctual satisfaction or to repudiate reality and persuade itself that there is no reason for fear, so that it may be able to retain the satisfaction. Thus there is a conflict between the demand of the instinct and the command of reality. But in fact the child takes neither course, or rather it takes both simultaneously, which comes to the same thing. It replies to the conflict with two contrary reactions both of which are valid and effective. On the one hand, with the help of certain mechanisms it rejects reality and refuses every prohibition; on the other hand, in the same breath it recognizes the danger of reality, takes the fear of that danger upon itself as a symptom and tries subsequently to divest itself of the fear. It must