The frequency with which the delusion of mutual death occurs in stupor is another evidence of its regressive psychology. The partner in the spiritual marriage is rarely, if ever, the natural object of adult affection, but rather a parent or other relative to whose memory the patient has unconsciously clung for many years, reawakening in the psychosis an ambition of childhood for an exclusive possession that reaches its fulfillment in this delusion. Closely allied with this is another delusion, that of being actually dead, which the patients sometimes express in action, even when not in words. The anesthesia to pin pricks, the immobility and the refusal to recognize the existence of the world around, in patients who give evidence of some intellectual operations still persisting, are probably all part of a feigned death, with the delusion expressing itself in corpse-like behavior. Finally we must consider the meaning of the deep stupor where no mentation of any kind can be proven and where none but vegetative functions seem to be operating. This state is either one of organic coma, in which case it marks the appearance of a physical factor not evidenced in the milder stages, or else it is the acme of this regression by withdrawal of interest. As has been stated, back of the period of primitive childish ideas there lies a hypothetical state of mental nothingness. If we accept the principle of regression we find historically an analogue to what is apparently the mental state of deep stupor in the earliest phases of infancy. This view receives justification from the study of the phenomenon of variations in symptoms. Mental faculties at birth are larval, and if such condition be artificially produced mental activity must be potentially present (as it would not be if we were dealing with coma). In Chapter IV phenomena of interruption of stupor symptoms were detailed. One case that was mentioned is now of particular importance as demonstrating that an appropriate stimulus may dispel the vacuity of complete stupor by raising mental functions to a point where delusions are entertained. This patient retrospectively recalled only certain periods of her deepest stupor, occasions when she was visited by her mother. At these times, as she claimed, she thought she was to be electrocuted and told her mother so, adding, “Then it would drop out of my mind again.” Otherwise her memory for this state was a complete blank. Here we see a normal stimulus producing not normality but something on the way towards it, that is, a condition less profound than the state out of which the patient was temporarily lifted.