In young nervous children fear is the most prominent psychical
symptom. The children are afraid of everything strange with which they
come in contact. They are afraid of animals, of a strange face, or an
unfamiliar room. Older children usually manage to control themselves,
suppress their tears, and prevent themselves from crying out, but it
is nevertheless easy to detect the struggle.

Often we find those distressing attacks to which the name
"night-terrors" has been given. The child wakes with a cry,--usually
soon after he has gone to sleep,--sits up in bed and shows signs of
extreme terror, gazing at some object of his dreams with wide-open
startled eyes, begging his nurse or mother to keep off the black dog,
or the man, or whatever the vision may be. Even after the light is
turned up and the child has been comforted, the terror continues, and
half an hour may elapse before he becomes quiet and can be persuaded
to go back to bed. In the morning as a rule he remembers nothing at
all.

Phobias of all sorts are common in nervous children, and result from a
morbid exaggeration of the instinct for self-preservation. Some cannot
bear to look from a height, others grow confused and frightened in a
crowd; dread of travelling, of being in an enclosed space such as a
church or a schoolroom, or of handling sharp objects may develop into
a constant obsession. I have known a little girl who was seized with
violent fear whenever her father or mother was absent from the house,
and she would stand for hours at the window in an agony of terror lest
some harm should have befallen them. As if with some strange notion of
propitiating the powers of darkness these children will often
constantly perform some action and will refuse to be happy until they