a dignified and honourable position. There were only two children, the patient and an elder sister. The sister was the mother's, and the patient her father's favourite. When the patient was five years old the father died suddenly from a stroke, at the age of forty-two. The patient felt herself very isolated and was from that time treated by the mother and the elder sister as the Cinderella. She noticed clearly enough that her mother preferred her sister to herself. Her mother remained a widow, her respect for her husband being too great to allow her to marry a second time. She preserved his memory “like a religious cult” and brought up her children in this way.
Later on the sister married, relatively young, the patient herself only at the age of twenty-four. She never cared for young men, they all seemed insipid; her mind turned always to more mature men. When about twenty she became acquainted with a stately gentleman rather over forty, to whom she was much drawn. For various reasons the friendship was broken off. At twenty-four she became acquainted with a widower who had two children. He was a fine, stately, somewhat corpulent man, and had an imposing presence like her father; he was forty-four. She married him and respected him enormously. The marriage was childless; the children by the first marriage died from an infectious disease. After four years of married life her husband also died. For eighteen years she remained his faithful widow. But at forty-six (just before the menopause) she experienced a great need of love. As she had no acquaintances she went to a matrimonial agency and married the first comer, a peasant of some sixty years who had been already twice divorced on account of brutality and perverseness; the patient knew this before marriage. She remained five unbearable years with him, when she also obtained a divorce. The neurosis set in a little later.
No further discussion will be required for those with psychoanalytic experience; the case is too obvious. For those unversed in psychoanalysis let me point out that up to her forty-sixth year the patient did but reproduce most
