Step by step, by a method of psychological analysis of his own invention, he took his patient back through her life history. He found that, in middle life, she had had several distressing experiences, but none of them adequate to account for her hysteria. Always, there remained an obscure element which did not become clearly outlined until, in the course of the analysis, childhood memories began to emerge. Then it appeared that there had been a period of night terrors, the source of which was definitely traced to a shock experienced at the age of five. At that age, through some mischance, the patient had been allowed to spend some time with an insane woman who was in a maniacal state. Of a sensitive nervous organisation to begin with, she was overwhelmed by this experience. She could not get the image of the insane woman out of her mind, and the fearful thought kept coming again and again to her, "Do little girls ever go insane?" Then followed the night terrors, to be "outgrown" in due course. But the analysis revealed that, though the memory of her experience with the insane woman had gradually faded from conscious recollection, it had never been subconsciously forgotten. Even now, fifty-five years later, she still saw this woman in her dreams. It was the baneful influence of this shock that had given rise to her obsessive fear of insanity and had prepared the ground for the condition of abnormal suggestibility making possible the hysterical imitation of organic kidney and stomach disease. As was proved by the outcome of Doctor Sidis's psychotherapeutic treatment. Now the question comes: If night terrors are so portentous a danger-signal, how prevent the development of the mentally disturbed and nervously strained condition which they indicate? This question has, perhaps, been sufficiently answered in previous chapters. Here I would simply reaffirm that emotional control is the great object to be kept steadily in view. It is, indeed, significant that night terrors are most likely to appear in children having a nervous, excitable father or mother. The emotionality, the chronic worrying and anxiety of the parent infect the child by the power of psychic contagion and make him fall an easy prey to any disquieting experience. And if, despite well-ordered moral training and the benign influence of a good parental example, the child shows a tendency to develop night terrors--what then? Well, here is how one psychologically enlightened parent nipped in the bud a fear-bred condition that might have resulted in night terrors or in some specific nervous ailment of the waking life: