Interpreting Dreams (Modern Classics Translated Texts)

by Sigmund Freud

Someone may object at this point that, while the hostile impulses of children towards their siblings can possibly be conceded, how does it happen that this childish ill-will reaches such a pitch of wickedness as to wish the rival or stronger playmate dead, as if every misdemeanour can be atoned for only by the death penalty? Anyone who does so object is forgetting that the child’s idea of ‘being dead’ has little in common with our own. It uses the same word, that’s about all. The child knows nothing of the horrors of decay, of shuddering in an icy tomb, of the dread of everlasting night that the adult imagination, as all myths of the beyond bear witness, tolerates so ill. Fear of death is foreign to the child, which is why children toy with the ghastly word,