Psychopathic or neurotic symptom complexes I observed in children whose early training was favorable to the awakening and development of the fear instinct. In children affected with fear of animals I traced the fear psychosis to the parents who were afraid of animals, on account of actual traumas in their life history, _the child being influenced by imitation, by suggestion, often subconscious, by the behavior of the parents in the presence of animals_. Such children are predisposed to recurrent psychopathic states. In all such cases the etiology is easy to find, if the patient is carefully examined. In many cases the fear instinct with its symptom complex is associated with external objects, giving rise to the so-called phobias. Instead, however, of being associated with external objects, the fear instinct is frequently associated with somatic functions (pathophobia), or with mental activities (phrenophobia). Man, aged forty-seven years; actor; family neurotic. Patient suffered from anorexia, indigestion, choking, vomiting, gagging, eructation, gastralgia, and occasional pains in the limbs. He led a rather gay and irregular life up to the age of thirty-two years, when he had syphilis, for which he was under treatment for two years. This scared him because he had the opportunity to see the consequences of syphilis in many of his friends. He had been under continual fear of the possibility of development of parasyphilitic diseases. Seven years ago, at the age of forty years, he had to watch at the bedside of an intimate friend, who had been suffering from severe gastric crises of tabes dorsalis. After one specially exhausting night of vigil, worry and fear, he went to bed for a short nap and woke up with the idea of general paresis and intense fear. From that time he began to suffer from symptoms of tabes with fear of general paresis. The patient had been an imaginative child; he had his fear instinct cultivated from early childhood by stories of frights, scares, and horrible accidents. When ten years old, his grandfather gave _Faust_ to him to read. Since then the patient was troubled with the fear of selling his soul to Satan. The patient was religious in his childhood, prayed much, and was possessed by the fear of committing sins. “It has now all come back,” he complained. A great number of fears could be traced to his early childhood. The somatic symptoms were the manifestations of association of experiences of parasyphilitic diseases, based on the pathological state of the fear instinct, a case of pathophobia, a somatopsychosis. A few hypnoidal treatments effected a cure. The patient returned to his occupation, free from any distressing symptoms.