ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud's paper "A Child is Being Beaten" brought the subject of the beating fantasy into focus. The extreme complexity of the organisation behind these fantasies is clearly brought out: also the difference between these fantasies in boys and in girls. The idea that a fantasy of this kind is over determined is part of the thesis, and also it is taken for granted that cruelty that is organised in this way is certain to be associated with a fixation at the anal phase. In one of the developments of the theme the patient's mother fetches a stick out of her wardrobe, but there were innumerable variations on the theme. The hopelessness in the patient's relationship to the mother was simply another expression of the fact that the mother as a person was not available, although she became available when the patient was older and indeed became a good friend of a sad and suffering kind.
