Original Sin*

When I was asked to make a short communication to you this afternoon, I searched my memory for a topic that might be of interest to you, and the subject of original sin occurred to me. You may perhaps think that it is going to take us a long way back, and that the topic can hardly be said to be very original. However, what I have in mind only goes back seven years. At that time a patient came to me from Vienna. She was a lady who had been there in analysis with Professor Freud. Practical reasons made it necessary for her to leave Vienna and to come to this country where she intended to continue her analytic work with me. To this the Professor had given his consent. May I say that never before nor since have I come across a patient who was so well trained in free association.

Amongst other symptoms the patient suffered from obsessional worries about original sin and fear of Hell though consciously she did not believe in religion. After having worked through various childhood-aspects which had already been analyzed in Vienna, one memory recurred persistently and painfully. At the age of three, she had played at marriage with a little boy her own age. They had dressed up for the wedding, and a number of other children in the neighborhood provided the wedding guests and bridesmaids. Then one day, the other children insinuated that my patient had played sexual games with this boy, in the bathroom, the windows of which looked onto the garden. The patient emphatically denied this accusation at the time, and persisted in denying it to me, and I have no reason to assume that her memory had failed her. Yet these harmless details came up again and again, accompanied by intense guilt and a feeling of despair. One day she mentioned that next door to the bathroom was the bedroom where her parents were in the habit of retiring for a short rest after lunch, in Summer. The window of this room had Venetian blinds, which made it impossible to peep into the bedroom from the garden. Mean