In her usual crisp and lucid style Anna Freud offers a brief commentary on the papers and discussions of the Association for Child Psychoanalysis meeting in London, July 1976. She deals instructively with anxiety and phobia and challenges the view that the phobic object has a compelling attraction for the child. Clinical evidence demonstrates that the true phobic defense is effective in blotting out any seductive qualities concealed in the anxiety, leaving the child truly calm in the absence of the phobic object. Both neurotic symptoms and healthy character formation require the same unpleasant affects for their development. Where, then, is the dividing line between the positive and negative impacts of fear and anxiety? Does it relate to quantitative factors, qualitative factors, and/or timing in their arrival on the developmental path?