but not the supposed mistress. From that time on the patient claims to have repeatedly brought herself to a calm view of the matter, so that she no longer believes the contents of the letter; but it has never gone very deep nor lasted very long. It was enough to hear the young woman’s name mentioned, or to meet her in the street, for a new attack of suspicion, agony, and reproaches to break out. This is the clinical picture of this excellent woman’s case. It did not require much experience of psychiatry to perceive that, in contrast to other neurotics, she described her symptoms too mildly—as we say, dissimulated them—and that she had never really overcome her belief in the anonymous letter. Now what attitude does a psychiatrist take up to such a case? We know already what he would say to the symptomatic act of a patient who does not close the waiting-room doors. He explains it as an accident, without interest psychologically, and no concern of his. But he cannot continue to take up this attitude in regard to the case of the jealous lady. The symptomatic action appears to be unimportant; the symptom calls for notice as a grave matter. Subjectively it involves intense suffering, and objectively it threatens to break up a family; its claim to psychiatric interest is therefore indisputable. First the psychiatrist tries to characterize the symptom by some essential attribute. The idea with which this lady torments herself cannot be called nonsensical in itself; it does happen that elderly husbands contract relationships with young women. But there is something else about it that is nonsensical and incomprehensible. The patient has absolutely no grounds, except the anonymous letter, for supposing that her loving and faithful husband belongs to this category of men, otherwise not so uncommon. She knows that this communication carries no proof, she can explain its origin satisfactorily; she ought therefore to be able to say to herself that she has no grounds for her jealousy and she does even say so, but she suffers just as much as if she regarded her jealousy as well-founded. Ideas of this kind that are inaccessible to logic and the arguments of reality are unanimously described as _delusions_. The good lady suffers therefore, from a _delusion of jealousy_. That is evidently the essential characteristic of the case.