Freud_Burlingham_1943_War_and_Children_k_text

fear in this manner and return, apparentlyundisturbed, to the pursuits and interests oftheir own childish world.The second reason for anxiety can best beunderstood by reverting to the child's attitudetowards destruction and aggression which wehave described before. After the first yearsof life the individual learns to criticise andovercome in himself certain instinctive wishes,or rather he learns to refuse them consciousexpression. He learns that it is bad to kill,to hurt and to destroy, and would like tobelieve that he has no further wish to do anyof these things. But he can only keep up thisattitude when the people in the outer world dolikewise.When he sees killing and destructiongoing on outside it arouses his fear that theimpulses which he has only a short while agoburied in himself will be awakened again.We have described above how the smallchild in whom these inhibitions against aggressionhave not yet been established is free ofthe abhorrence of air raids. The slightly olderchild who has just been through this fight withitself will, on the other hand, be particularlysensitive to their menace. When it has only justlearned to curb its own aggressive impulses, itwill have real outbreaks of anxiety when bombscome down and do damage around it.This type of anxiety we have only seen in28