Cases reported by Seitz, Fraiberg, and Sterba demonstrate that obsessional states are present in two- to three-year-old children. In these patients, ritualized behavior aims at an illusion of retaining a primary narcissistic experience. Since certain traumata are incomprehensible, given the cognitive position of the anal stage child, obsessional magical means are used in an attempt to induce an external agent to fulfil narcissistic wishes. Freedman proposes that there is a developmental phase between eighteen months and three and a half years when 'pressure towards autonomous gratification of instinctual needs, the particular introjects already formed and cognitive limitations … yield a state of "obsessional primacy"…'.