The purpose of the paper is to describe a preconceptive stage in the biological parents, never free from ambivalence, causing minor or major conflicts in the child from birth on. Throughout these contributions we hope to supply a few of the missing links in the area of psychogenesis. The parents, as initial external objects, harbour these ambivalencies and exert their influence throughout the child's development.

We present Freud's seldom, if ever, quoted case history recording material on parental death-wishes and fantasied infanticide. It symbolizes how its omission has left this data strewn, not only in Freud's writings, but in the daily material of many clinical psychoanalysts. Perhaps many of us have identified with its exclusion from the general consensus of the theory, and equally made little use of our own vital observations.