Medicine: Belling the Cat

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After that, it was plain sailing. Mrs. A. took the kitten home, and as it grew, she got used to cats. She stopped walking on the edge of the sidewalk, stopped having cat nightmares, even had pleasant dreams of kittens. Then her dreams took a different turn: in them she violently counterattacked her domineering father. Somehow, report the therapists, this resolved some conflict in her unconscious. Mrs. A. stopped her frantic busying around the house and, for the first time since childhood, has stopped biting her nails. A year after beginning treatment, the therapists report in the British Medical Journal, Mrs. A. shows no sign of developing another phobia to replace the one she lost.