Note 28 — Chapter III · THE ORGANIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
Reading edition
There is a story reminiscent of juvenile days in my own home that is to the point. An older brother, then between four and five years of age, was being given his bath in the nursery as was customary in those days. Hanging above the mantel was a picture of the Sistine Madonna. The youngster being freed of his clothing ran skipping about the room. His governess happened to be present, and being duly horrified or, what is more probable as I remember her, acting in response to a sense of duty, she gently chid him for his lack of modesty, saying “Jesus doesn’t love little boys who go about that way.” The child looked up at the picture of the nude infant with doubtless a more discerning sympathy with Jesus’ views than grown-ups are wont to attribute to the wisdom of childhood, and looking his would-be instructress quietly in the eyes he replied incontrovertibly: “He does it hisse’f!”
If the story of my brother’s life should ever be fully told, as some day I hope it may, it will help us realize the unerring fatality of an early enforced system of repression and its logical effect upon the individual’s subsequent life as upon its close.