Ella Freeman Sharpe. Int. J. Psa., XXIV, 1943, pp. 41–45. Educators since ancient times have made use of 'cautionary tales': 'If you play with matches, you are going to burn yourself'. Mrs. Sharpe stresses the point that 'dangerous' instinctual impulses in this respect are treated in the same way as external dangers by educators as well as by children. Several patients understood and used cautions against fire as cautions against masturbation. However, one finds it difficult to follow the author when she calls the idea that mother might have been robbed of her penis by father's sexual attacks, or the fantasy of dreadful subterranean dragons, 'cautionary tales' produced in order to help the ego to fight off incestuous demands. These ideas seem to be the motives of repression of incestuous demands rather than methodical aids of the repression.