doctor. The idea had long been forgotten, only to reappear as a
compulsion. The natural desire for a child was strong in her, but was
repressed as unholy in an unmarried woman. The associated childish
idea of drug-taking was not repellent to her moral sense and was used
as a substitute for the real desire to bear a child.

Many of my patients have suffered from the effect of some such
birth-theories. One young girl, twenty years old, was greatly
afflicted with myso-phobia, or the fear of contamination. She spent
most of her time in washing her hands and keeping her hands and
clothing free from contamination by contact with innumerable harmless
objects. When cleaning her shoes on the grass, she would kneel so that
the hem of her skirt would touch the grass, lest some dust should fly
up under her clothes. After eating luncheon in the park with a girl
who had tuberculosis, she said that she was not afraid of tuberculosis
in the lungs, but asked if something like tuberculosis might not get
in and begin to grow somewhere else. Her life was full to overflowing
of such compulsive fears.

As opportunity offered itself from day to day, I would catch her
compulsive ideas in the very act of expressing themselves, and would
pin her down as to the association and the source of her fear, always
taking care not to make suggestions or ask leading questions. She was
finally convinced out of her own mouth that her real fear was the idea
of something getting into her body and growing there. Then she told
how she had questioned her mother about the reproductive life and had
been put off with signs of embarrassment. For a long time she had been
afraid to walk or talk with a boy, because, not knowing how conception
might occur, she feared grave consequences.

Very soon after the beginning of her conversations with me, the girl
realized that her fear was really a disguised desire that something
might be planted within and grow. With her new understanding of
herself, her compulsions promptly slipped away. She began to eat and
sleep, and to live a happy, natural life.

=Chronic Repression.= It takes first-hand acquaintance with nervous
patients to realize how common are stories like these. Unnecessary
repressions based on false training are the cause of many a physical
symptom and mental distress which a little parental frankness might
have forestalled.[36]

[Footnote 36: Parents who are eager to handle this subject in the
right way are