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The direct observation of children has the disadvantage of working upon data which are easily misunderstandable; psycho-analysis is made difficult by the fact that it can only reach its data, as well as its conclusions, after long détours. But by co-operation the two methods can attain a satisfactory degree of certainty in their findings.
There is a wonderful passage in Mrs. Dalloway in which Woolf (1925) describes the heroine's coming to terms with her perception of a spinster-antagonist who in moments is transformed from a powerful, taciturn, prehistoric monster into “merely Miss Kilman, in a MacKintosh…. At this dwindling of the monster, Clarissa laughed” (p. 190). In this paper I explore some characteristics of a transitory phobic phenomenon typical of early childhood. These phenomena seemingly come out of nowhere and, like Clarissa's monster, just as inexplicably seem to dwindle away.
Freud (1926) attempted to address the problem of these earliest phobias in “Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety.” He was reluctant to trace them back to birth anxiety. Accepting the possibility of very intense, very early outbreaks of anxiety occurring before the differentiation of the superego, Freud believed that ultimately primal