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101
the mother admitted that she had slapped the child very severely
three weeks before. Here it was again obvious that the mother's
defensive mechanism was in process owing to the punishments of
the child. It appeared that the child had been punished because
she had bitten the new baby so badly that the marks on the fingers
showed the next day. It was later elicited that she was also found
trying to suffocate the baby with the bedclothes, and as the mother
said "the look on her face was fiendish." Further it was found
that the child had been made to wear her wet clothes as a punishment
in order to see if that would make any impression on the
child, but with no results whatever. Here obviously was a case
of one of those intense jealousies which are to be found and which
are much more common than usually supposed of the new baby.
The child being unable to attract attention to herself—having
for three-and-a-half years been the only pebble on the beach,
apparently conceived this manner of attracting the mother's
attention from the baby, which had had effect, but in the wrong
way. The mother's primary forgetfulness was obviously due to
hostility born of the fact that she was not quite sure what attitude
would be taken towards her manner of dealing with the child.
As soon as it was found that my only effort was to help and
not to blame the mother although she had unconsciously been the
cause of the condition, both she and her father were ready to help.
I ascertained later through another source that the child had been
constantly saying to the mother when she was attending to the
small baby "Mummie, you do love me now baby's come, don't you?''
The parents were intelligent people and saw the reasonableness of
the analysis, and within three weeks the child was crying if it
couldn't do things for the new baby. All hostility had vanished
and the child is a different creature altogether.
In two other cases which occurred much about the same time,
of the same jealousy, one was found hitting the new baby on the
head with a powder tin, and the other sticking a fork into it.