The impulse of self-preservation, the fear instinct, and the principle of subconscious reserve energy give an insight into the multiform symptomatology of the psychopathic diathesis. The following classes of people are subject to psychopathic affections: (I) Childless people. (II) People who had been afflicted with various diseases in childhood. (III) Children of sickly, nervous, psychopathic parents who have kept their progeny in a constant state of anxiety, full of terrors and troubles of life. (IV) People who had been affected by a series of shocks and fears in childhood and youth. (V) People whose parents suffered long from various systemic diseases, especially cardiac and tubercular troubles. (VI) In a large family of children the first, or last child, or sickly child of psychopathic parents. (VII) The only child, or sickly child, especially of a widowed parent who is of a psychopathic diathesis. _In all these cases the psychopathic state is due to early cultivation of the fear instinct, self-impulse, and low level or dissociated state of vital reserve energy._ CHAPTER XXXVI CONTROL OF THE NEUROTIC[17] The first thing in the examination and treatment of neurosis is the elimination of any physical trouble. It is only after such an elimination that one should resort to psychotherapeutic treatment. In psychopathic or neurotic diseases one should take into consideration the fact that the patients are characterized by the tendency of formation of habits which are hard to break. The patients are apt to ask that the same thing be done again and again for the simple reason that it has been done several times before. In other words, _psychopathic neurosis is characterized by automatism and routine_. This tendency to _recurrence_ is characteristic of all forms of primitive life as well as of mental activities which are on the decline,--it is the easiest way to get along.