ABSTRACT
A mother, in telling me about her four-year-old daughter, whom we will call Elsie, said that she showed particular love and tenderness for her father. Recently she had particularly liked to play at being father’s wife. When the mother asked her why she wanted to be her father’s wife she replied that she would ‘like to know what it was like’, and added that she could then at last find out ‘what coffee tastes like’. ‘I asked her’, the mother continued, ‘what is to happen to me, and she had her answer ready: “You will just be our child”.’
