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SEVERAL YEARS AGO A 15-YEAR-OLD GIRL CONSULTED ME WITH THE unusual complaint that she was tormented by a persistent desire to steal a baby and an even deeper concern that she might act on her impulse. I shall present selected clinical material from the analysis of this adolescent girl which may contribute to our understanding of female development and provide the basis for the suggestion in general that kleptomania and kidnapping fantasies may have a common origin.
The possible universality of the fantasy to steal a baby may be supported by the interest children show in this subject, as is perhaps best illustrated by the number of fairy tales and children's stories that deal with the theme of kidnapping. Children express such fantasies in a variety of ways: (1) Those in which the child imagines or "fears" that he may be kidnapped are most common. (2) Fantasies in which the child imagines himself as a spectator of something that he "fears" will happen to another frequently are related to an "unwanted" sibling. (3) A third version was expressed by the adolescent girl described in this paper in which she herself is the kidnapper. In my clinical experience, I have never observed this fantasy in such unqualified form; however, remnants and traces have so often betrayed its presence in the unconscious of others, that I am led to deduce that this impulse finds expression in a developmental fantasy common to all.