An Agute Psychotic Anxiety Occurring in a Boy of Four Years 1 (1943)

I wish to describe and discuss the material which follows because it illustrates clearly the interaction between internal and external situations. During the analysis of this four-year-old boy, certain acute anxieties arose in response to particular external events. These events were reflected in a detailed and dramatic way in the content of the anxieties, and in the various defences to which the patient resorted.