The wish to create, the dilemmas regarding the value, source, and ownership of one's potential and ideas, and the threats that these involve, are explored as they emerge in a dialogue between Anna Freud and her father, embedded in Anna Freud's first paper "Beating Fantasies and Daydreams" (1922). Insight into these aspects of the struggle of creativity contributes to the understanding of their relationship to writing, masochism, sublimation, and other associated psychological processes. Through the analysis of the paper the identity of the patient described is revealed to be Anna Freud herself. This sheds light on her personal development and the way in which it influenced developments in psychoanalytic thinking.