Naturally we do not see individual cases in which all these stages appear successively, each sharply defined from its predecessor. To expect this would be as reasonable as to look for a man whose behavior was determined wholly by his most recent experience. Any psychologist knows that every human being behaves in accordance with influences whose history is recent or represents the habit of a lifetime. At any given minute our behavior is not simply determined by the immediate situation, but is the product of many stages in our development. Quite similarly we should not expect in the psychoses to find evidences of regression to a given period of the individual’s life appearing exclusively, but rather we should look for reactions at any given time being determined preponderantly by the type of mentation characteristic for a given stage of his development. As a matter of fact, we see in psychoses, particularly in stupor, more sharply defined regressions to different levels than we ever see in normal life. Our psychological hypothesis would be incomplete and probably unsound if it could not offer as valid explanations for the atypical features in our stupor reactions as for the typical. The unusual features which one meets in the benign stupors are ideas or mood reactions occurring apparently as interruptions to the settled quietude or in more protracted mild mood reactions, such as vague distress, depression or incomplete manic symptoms, which have been described in the chapter on affect. The interruptions are easily explained by the theory of regression. If stupor represents a complete return to the state of nothingness, then the descent to the Nirvana or the re-ascent from it should be characterized by the type of thinking with the appropriate mood which belongs to less primitive stages of development. A review of our material seems to indicate that there is a definite relationship between the type of onset and the character of the succeeding stupor. For instance, in the cases so far quoted in this book, the onsets characterized by mere worry and unhappiness and gradual withdrawal of interest had all of them typical clinical pictures. On the other hand, of those who began with reactions of definite excitement, anxiety or psychotic depression, there were interruptions which looked like miniature manic-depressive psychoses in all but one case. This would lead one to think that these patients retraced their steps on recovery or with every lifting of the stupor process, moved slightly upward on the same path on which they had traveled in the first regression. The case of Charlotte W. (Case 12), which is fully discussed in the chapter on Ideational Content, offers excellent examples of these principles.