the parents. Every neurotic naturally strives against this relentless formulation of the content of his neurosis, and he often refuses to recognise it at any cost, but still it is always justified. To be sure, the conflict is not on the surface, but must generally be revealed through a painstaking psychoanalysis.
The history of our patient reads as follows:
The father had a powerful personality. She was his favourite daughter, and entertained for him a boundless veneration. At the age of seventeen she for the first time fell in love with a young man. At that time she twice dreamt the same dream, the impression of which never left her in all her later years; she even imputed a mystic significance to it, and often recalled it with religious dread. In the dream she saw a tall, masculine figure with a very beautiful white beard; at this sight she was permeated with a feeling of awe and delight as if she experienced the presence of God Himself. This dream made the deepest impression on her, and she was constrained to think of it again and again. The love affair of that period proved to be one of little warmth, and was soon given up. Later the patient married her present husband. Though she loved her husband she was led continually to compare him with her deceased father; this comparison always proved unfavourable to her husband. Whatever the husband said, intended, or did, was subjected to this standard and always with the same result: “My father would have done all this better and differently.” Our patient's life with her husband was not happy, she could neither respect nor love him sufficiently; she was inwardly dissatisfied. She gradually developed a fervent piety, and at the same time violent hysterical symptoms supervened. She began by going into raptures now over this and now over that clergyman; she was looking everywhere for a spiritual friend, and estranged herself more and more from her husband. The mental trouble manifested itself about ten years after marriage. In her diseased state she refused to have anything to do with her husband and child; she imagined herself pregnant by another man. In brief, the
