school. The relations between the patients and their parents have been studied in detail in as much as these relations were regarded as of etiological significance.
Infantile Mental Attitude
It was soon noticed that such patients lived still partly or wholly in their childhood-world, although quite unconscious themselves of this fact. It is a difficult task for psychoanalysis so exactly to investigate the psychological mode of adaptation of the patients as to be capable of putting its finger on the infantile misunderstanding. We find among neurotics many who have been spoiled as children. These cases give the best and clearest example of the infantilism of their psychological mode of adaptation. They start out in life expecting the same friendly reception, tenderness and easy success, obtained with no trouble, to which they have been accustomed by their parents in their youth. Even very intelligent patients are not capable of seeing at once that they owe the complications of their life and their neurosis to the trail of their infantile emotional attitude. The small world of the child, the familiar surroundings—these form the model of the big world. The more intensely the family has stamped the child, the more will it be inclined, as an adult, instinctively to see again in the great world its former small world. Of course this must not be taken as a conscious intellectual process. On the contrary, the patient feels and sees the difference between now and then, and tries to adapt himself as well as he can. Perhaps he will even believe himself perfectly adapted, for he grasps the situation intellectually, but that does not prevent the emotional from being far behind the intellectual standpoint.
Unconscious Phantasy
It is unnecessary to trouble you with instances of this phenomenon. It is an every-day experience that our emotions are never at the level of our reasoning. It is exactly the same with such a patient, only with greater intensity. He may perhaps believe that, save for his neurosis, he is a normal person, and hence adapted to the conditions of life. He does not suspect that he has not relinquished certain childish pretensions, that he still
