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it is nervous, by talking of it to other people in the child's presence,
until the unfortunate child becomes obsessed with the idea that it
cannot be normal. If only we could get new mothers for some
of these cases, how different their outlook on life would be.
One very instructive case was a girl aged 10, who had been
out of school some months. The history was given, that she was
completely upset by the death of a sister in an Institution abutting
on to their garden.
When I first saw the child she was extremely nervous,
screamed in terror every night when taken upstairs to bed, and
continued to scream unless her mother stayed with her until she
fell asleep. She would not go upstairs alone during the daytime,
nor would she go out to the w c. at night.
Her condition was such, that the family doctor had told the
parents that there was nothing else for them to do, but to sell
their house and get right away from the associations connected
with the sister's death. Ten months after the sister's death, both
mother and the patient were in deep mourning. The patient was
off her food hut nutrition was quite good.
Investigation showed that the phobia of the dark had nothing
whatever to do with the sister's death. It was found to be due
to having been terrified by tome story (? historical) told at school,
wherein a little girl was taken away by robbers. This incident
has become an obsession with the child, forming the foundation of
the phobia.
The first psychotherapeutic interview was entirely satisfactory.
Arrangements were made to transfer her to another school, also
I advised the mother to take her out of mourning and to remove
the numerous photographs of the dead sister.
At the next session, a week later, the child was very much
better, my note being—"for last three nights no screaming, will
now go up to bedroom with torch in the dark by herself, and by
herself in the daytime." In fact, so much had she improved, that
she asked to remain at her old school, which was done at once.
A week later the child was quite free from terrors—no screaming,