Anonymous
(German folklore)

"The Horse of Schilda"


The citizens of Schilda ... possessed a horse with whose feats of strength they were highly pleased and against which they had only one objection -- that it consumed such a large quantity of expensive oats. They determined to break it of this bad habit very gently by reducing its ration by a few stalks every day, till they had accustomed it to complete abstinence. For a time things went excellently:  the horse was weaned to the point of eating only one stalk a day, and on the succeeding day it was at length to work without any oats at all. On the morning of that day the spiteful animal was found dead; and the citizens of Schilda could not make out what it had died of.

Retold by Sigmund Freud in
The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis.

In his concluding lecture at Clark University (1910), Freud allegorizes this tale to make a therapeutic point.  That is, he endows it with a special meaning for his own purposes by converting it into a parable.