ABSTRACT
One of the characteristics of the syntax of oedipal thought is the kind of magical thinking that makes wishes dangerous to be wished. In this chapter the author revisits Freud’s discussion of a fairy tale involving three wishes and how they go wrong. Freud wrote that neuroses reveal the meaning of the third wish, which was required to undo the disaster of the earlier wishes, but he never elaborated. The author returns to that observation, noting that it is a common neurotic fantasy that the only way to repair the damage caused by the power of one’s thinking is to use that same magical power to undo it.
