Making a diagnosis of functional, rather than organic, disease, the neurologist resorted to dream-analysis to get at the hidden causes of trouble. At his request, the girl related several dreams, all of which had the noticeable peculiarity that in them the dreamer herself was, to an unusual extent, the dominant figure of the dream-action. Another striking feature of her dreams was that many of them had to do with imaginary experiences of a painful character befalling either the dreamer's father or her brother. Mindful of the theory that dreams are directly or indirectly representative of secret wishes, the neurologist questioned his little patient about her family life. She frankly admitted that she disliked her father, and was not overfond of her brother. She disliked the father--or, as she vehemently said, "hated" him--because he scolded her. Her coldness towards her brother arose from the fact that her mother had fallen into the habit of tactlessly holding him up as a model of good behaviour. "I love my mother, though," she added, "because she is good to me, and generally lets me do what I want." Summoning the mother to a private conference, the physician learned that, from early childhood, his patient had been very obstinate and self-willed. Her mother, through mistaken affection, had pampered her. She had literally made herself a slave to the daughter, even to the extent of giving up evening engagements that she might sit by her daughter's bed, gently stroking her head until she fell asleep. "She cannot sleep unless I do this," said the mother, "and though I have lately tried to discontinue it, I cannot, because she cries and shrieks until I come to her." To the neurologist the situation was now perfectly clear. The daughter's nervous symptoms were manifestly the not surprising reaction of a personality untrained in emotional control and unexpectedly confronted by a novel and painful state of affairs--the mother's half-hearted attempt to break away from her self-imposed slavery. However, it would hardly do to tell the mother that her early mismanagement of the child was responsible for the neurotic condition which had developed, and that this neurotic condition was, in reality, only a subconsciously originated device to reassert the daughter's waning authority over her mother. What the neurologist did say was: "Madam, if you want your daughter to get well, you must at once stop this practice of stroking her to sleep. I must ask you to begin to-night. Send your daughter to her room, leave her in bed, shut and lock the door, and let her shriek. This may seem hard and cruel, but it is actually a greater kindness than a continuance of the stroking would be. It is, indeed, a first and necessary step in her cure." The mother obeyed. For two nights the house resounded with the girl's cries. The third night she went to bed and to sleep without a protest. Then the physician once more sent for the mother.