rounded by disturbing and uncomprehended elements and was utterly at the mercy of circumstances because of my ignorance." From the first there were many difficulties and obstacles in the way of a happy completion of her love. She feared from the beginning that it was foredoomed to disaster, that trouble would inevitably come, and knew too what the cost would be. It came as she had anticipated, the engagement was abruptly broken off, and a period of acute mental suffering followed.

Before the débâcle she had been staying in the neighbourhood in which her lover lived, but her joy was marred by the malice of a man who sought to undermine her lover's confidence in her and was only too successful. To escape from these and other difficulties she returned to her home, but with a dreadful apprehension that she would never see her lover again. At first they corresponded regularly, but soon clouds arose on the horizon. The young man one day wrote to her something in the nature of a confession of his past life and was anxious for assurance that his few sex-adventures would not mar their relationship. This assurance was readily given. Then another letter followed from the man in which he gave certain 'medical' reasons for his adventures, remarking that the 'nature' of man necessitated the satisfaction of his sexual needs. The recipient of this letter, be it remembered, was a young girl of nineteen whose only education in the matter of sex had been such as to associate it either with dread or shame. This second letter frightened her. She was attacked by terrifying thoughts about the 'nature' of man, and with doubts as to whether her fiancé were "one of those men in whom love is nothing but a fierce and ugly passion." She tried hard to be sensible and reasonable in the matter but seemed to herself to be "in the grip of a power stronger than herself which she did not understand." However she thrust these troublesome thoughts aside and all went well for a little while. Then her enemy gradually succeeded in poisoning the mind of her fiancé against her. Strained relations arose in consequence of a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the matter of sex, and the engagement came to a sudden end. The subject now recalls that when this first happened there was an instant's intense relief. The blow for some time anticipated had fallen, the worst was over and there could be no more suspense. Immediately after however she collapsed on the floor in a state of unconsciousness, for a long silence before the fateful letter arrived had strained her nerves to the utmost.

All the facts relevant for the understanding of the phobia have, I think, now been given. It certainly seemed to the subject to symbolise

a fear of sex. Considering what her experience had been she remarked to me one day, "What wonder that a fear of matters sexual should seize me in its grip." When asked why she thought the fear had become attached to storms, she replied, "The reason is obvious, fear of sex would be fear of Nature, and would naturally attach itself to Nature in a savage mood."

Other features of an actual storm appeared to have psychical signifi

cance:

(1) First it transpired that the anticipation of the storm was the most terrible part. This had its counterpart at the time of the love affair. As the subject put it, "First love is always, I should think, a matter of apprehension to a young girl, especially when she has been brought up in the old fashion of ignorance and shame in matters of sex,-there were undercurrents that filled me with vague apprehension all the time-I feared from the first-disaster-which made the joy all the more intense, yet the whole time one of terrible unrest. Twice I was seized by a fierce panic of terror, of nothing tangible, just a dim threat.-That time was so like the storms, now I dare to look back boldly. First the wild exhilaration, mingled with growing, ever growing, fear and panic; the swift rush of events towards a half-apprehended disaster; a brief, terrible, tension and a swift crash." What was the reason for this sense of panic and terror of the intangible? From the present standpoint the subject thinks she can explain it, and interprets it now as having been a fear of love itself and its consequences.

(2) It was not the storm itself, nor any fear of physical injury, but rather something behind the storm that was so greatly feared. This state of mind during a storm was a representation of that general fear of 'Nature,' more particularly man's nature, as something fierce and terrifying that we have seen was a characteristic of the subject's mind during the love episode.

(3) The subject was deeply impressed by the suddenness of the tropical storms. Here again the love affair supplies its analogue.

"I wonder if there is any connection between the two, the sudden violent gusts of emotion, and the sudden onslaught of a tropical storm. They seem so much alike, bursting suddenly, sweeping all before them, and leaving an exhausted wreck behind."

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES.

One or two further points in the case are of interest.

(a) After the love affair that ended so disastrously, the subject threw religion to the winds and launched out into a life of gaiety and wildness for a period of two years. In talking over this period it seemed to her that she was either trying to soothe her pain by inflicting suffering on others—“hitting back"-playing with fire but at the same time taking good care that she did not get burned herself, or else, solacing herself by baiting, and then adroitly evading, the very thing she feared,—“Conquering it, so it seemed to me perhaps."

(b) On several occasions the subject had been guilty of inexplicable acts of cruelty. These acts surprised her greatly, as she was by nature kind and gentle. On one occasion (after marriage), she thrashed her dog unmercifully although she was very fond of him. On another occasion, at the age of nine, she tried to drown a cat. On a third, at four years old, she viciously crushed a slug. These seemed to be of the nature of compulsive acts. The dog so cruelly punished had gone after another dog, 'at the call of nature.' The cat was ill-treated because cats had brought her shame when she had innocently remarked in public to her horrified mother that the cat, which was about to have kittens, was much too fat. The slug was crushed 'because it was naked,' by comparison with a snail. This occurred after it had been brought home to her that 'nakedness' was considered wrong.

(c) During the analysis, the subject awoke from a rambling dream with a piece of knowledge she had not before possessed, namely, that the dread of life generally, and of storms, was much more active when she was with her husband. She recalled that on a certain day, when he had just sailed for the East, there was a bad gale, but it was not until she saw reference to it in the papers that she realised that there was any cause for anxiety. When talking this interesting fact over with the subject towards the end of the analysis she remarked, "I can see now why this was so. I did not fear storms so much when my husband was away because the fear would then be less active, the subject of sex less prominent to me.'

(d) The desire to rush out into the storm. "Thinking this over, I feel it means a desire to get the worst over as soon as possible." In the love episode there was a time towards the end of the engagement of anxious suspense, when the subject was waiting for the expected final blow to fall. It looks as if the desire to rush out into the storm in order to "get

the worst over as soon as possible," might be a reproduction of this painful state of suspense.

CONCLUSION.

According to the Freudian theory, analysis should have revealed the fact that in childhood sensuous pleasure was obtained from one or other of the various forms of infantile sexuality; that repression took place later forming an 'unconscious' region which, when it had grown sufficiently strong to provoke a severe tension between it and the conscious, gave rise to the phobia.

The only event in early childhood which might perhaps be thought to come under one of these categories of 'infantile sexuality' was the game of 'naked savages' which the subject played with her brother. Did this game reveal a pleasure in exhibiting the naked body, which in a strict sense might be called 'sexual,' because when adults do this they are under the sway of sexual feeling? Did it result in an exhibitionist tendency being repressed until it became unconscious and the nucleus of an unconscious complex? The subject and I discussed this matter at great length on all sides, and she was very persistent in affirming that there was no sensuous pleasure tendency here. She feels convinced that there was nothing more than the delight all small children feel in getting away from the restriction of clothing. It is admitted, however, that when she found it was considered wrong, and if played at all must be played in secret, shame was aroused, and was in all probability the beginning of what later grew into an attitude of disgust, and later of fear, of sex in general.

In consequence of the great importance attached by the Freudian school to family relationships, a further point in connection with the subject's childhood ought not perhaps to be passed over in silence. This is the great devotion felt towards the favourite brother. Was this affection in every way normal, or did it result in an incestuous fixation. of the 'libido'? It is urged by psycho-analysts that not infrequently the filial love which a daughter lavishes on her father is accompanied by a dissociation of the physical from the psychical side of love. Thereafter her love life remains mutilated and she is never happy because she feels that life holds something that she has missed. It is said that the same disastrous results may follow in the case of a sister having too great a devotion to her brother. Was this the case with our subject? There is no evidence that it was so. Indeed the facts seem to furnish positive evidence the other way. For at the age of nineteen there occurred the

love episode which awoke very strong emotions, so strong in fact that they 'scared' her. This love experience was not merely psychical, but very full-blooded indeed.

It seems difficult then to bring this case under the category of repressed infantile sexuality, if this means strictly that sensuous pleasure once enjoyed was subsequently repressed. We must therefore try to proffer some other explanation. The facts suggest that it was the great emotional disturbance engendered by the love affair as well as the accumulation of the childhood experiences that were responsible for the phobia. During childhood we get first shame, merging into disgust and becoming at the time of the 'nightdress incident' genuine fear. This fear was augmented at the age of sixteen by the encounter with the strange man. Although none of these incidents were forgotten, it may be said that this fear was put out of sight, because it was never recognised as a fear of sex. Only by analysis was this revealed. By the time of the love-affair, the fear had gained considerable strength underground, so to speak, and the circumstances surrounding this episode tended strongly to increase the fear. But this was not all. Even after the termination of the engagement, the subject had various experiences which would intensify this hidden fear, on the occasion, for example, when she was nearly strangled by a man. All these adventures and narrow escapes, when, in her 'wild' time, she was playing with fire, must have been an aggravation of this hidden fear. Moreover at the time when she married she had to fight and conquer an intense repugnance. Subsequently, while in the tropics, there was always, in the background, the 'Black' menace, which the subject informs me assumed greater proportions the winter before phobia-time.

But the love-affair, "terrible in its suddenness, its anticipation of trouble mingling with and counteracting the joy, its element of halfunderstood circumstances, its presentation of sex in a terrifying aspect," was an equally important constituent of the phobia. It is a question whether, without this experience which generated a sentiment comprising many strong emotions destined to become undetached, the phobia would have occurred. Indeed it was at this time that there appeared the 'olive-green devil who mocked' and who was born when "wheels spun round in my head and missed the clutch," indicating, as it seems to me, dissociation of the mind. The storm typified this actual experience as well as sex in general. As the subject put it, "The storms, so like my own general impression of sex and my supreme crisis in particular, provided a logical and natural object on to which the fear might be pro