Sigmund Freud 1.1

'A twenty-four-year-old man preserved the following picture from the fifth year of his life: In the garden

of a summer-house he sat on a stool next to his aunt, who was engaged in teaching him the alphabet. He

found difficulty in distinguishing the letter m from n, and he begged his aunt to tell him how to tell one

from the other. His aunt called his attention to the fact that the letter m had one whole portion (a stroke)

more than the letter n. There was no reason to dispute the reliability of this childhood recollection; its

meaning, however, was discovered only later, when it showed itself to be the symbolic representation of

another boyish inquisitiveness. For just as he wanted to know [p. 66] the difference between m and n at that

time so he concerned himself later about the difference between boy and girl, and he would have willing

that just this aunt should be his teacher. He also discovered that the difference similar one; that the boy

again had one portion more than the girl, and at the time of this recognition his memory awoke to the

responding childish inquisitiveness.'

Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud (1901)