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Freud_Burlingham_1943_War_and_Children_k_text

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came <strong>and</strong> went. Lately, she had been free fromit for some time. During April she fell ill withtonsillitis. While she was in bed with a temperature,her nervous cough returned <strong>and</strong> developedinto a regular attack of asthma bronchiale,with all the usual somatic accompaniments.Her tonsillitis together with her asthmadisappeared within a few days. She was wellfor a while <strong>and</strong> then again returned to thesickroom with a slight cold aggravated by herusual nervous cough. So far we underst<strong>and</strong>little about the origin <strong>and</strong> development ofIris' symptom. There isthe suspicion, of course,that her cough had started in imitation of herfather's cough.The mother herself reports that a neighboursuddenly said to her: "Don't you notice, Mrs.Coster, that Iris coughs exactly the way herfather did."A tendency for hysterical identification isvery evident in Iris' case. She picks up habitsfrom the other children, adopts them as herown, drops them again after a while <strong>and</strong> picksup new ones. In the beginning, when she hadformed a friendship with Barbara, a little girlof her own age, she suddenly started the sametemper tantrums that had made Barbara conspicuousin the house. Though she is no thumbsucker herself, she suddenly started sucking herthumb in a way that is peculiar to Keith, a boy107

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