ABSTRACT

A father proudly shows a newly-born baby brother to his little 2-year-old girl, expecting her to rejoice. Instead, she asks: ‘When will he die again?’ Reporting this story, Anna Freud comments that children’s jealousy should be taken seriously and attributes its origin to the relationship of the child to the mother: ‘This wish for his brothers and sisters to be dead is thoroughly natural on the part of the child . . . An emotional conflict arises within him only when he realizes that his mother . . . demands that he give up these evil wishes, and even love [his siblings]. Here is the starting point of all the difficulties in the emotional relations among children within a family’ (1930: 84-5).