rest entirely, at least the parents found no opportunity to make any pertinent observations. That the problem should come to a standstill just here is not at all surprising, for this is really its most difficult part. Moreover, we know from experience that not many children go beyond these limits during the period of childhood. The problem is almost too difficult for the childish mind, which still lacks much knowledge necessary to its solution.
This standstill lasted about five months, during which no phobias or other signs of complex-elaboration appeared. After this lapse of time there appeared premonitory signs of some new incidents. Anna's family lived at that time in the country near a lake where the mother and children could bathe. As Anna was afraid to wade farther into the water than knee-deep, her father once put her into the water, which led to an outburst of crying. In the evening while going to bed Anna asked her mother, “Do you not believe that father wanted to drown me?” A few days later there was another outburst of crying. She continued to stand in the gardener's way until he finally placed her in a newly dug hole. Anna cried bitterly, and afterwards maintained that the gardener wished to bury her. Finally she awoke during the night with fearful crying. Her mother went to her in the adjoining room and quieted her. She had dreamed that “a train passed and then fell in a heap.”
This tallies with the “stage coach” of “little Hans.” These incidents showed clearly enough that fear was again in the air, i.e. that a resistance had again arisen preventing transference to the parents, and that therefore a great part of her love was converted into fear. This time suspicion was not directed against the mother, but against the father, who she was sure must know the secret, but would never let anything out. What could the father be doing or keeping secret? To the child this secret appeared as something dangerous, so that she felt the worst might be expected from the father. (This feeling of childish anxiety with the father as object we see again most distinctly in adults, especially in dementia præcox, which lifts the veil of obscurity
