“When I became older, about the age of eighteen to twenty, a new form of fear appeared, like a new sprout added to the main trunk, or possibly growing out of the main fear of disease and death, that is the fear of some vague, impending evil. The fear of some terrible accident to myself and more so to my family, or to any of the people of whom I happen to take care, is constantly present in the margin of my consciousness, or as you would put it, in my subconsciousness. Sometimes the fears leave me for a while, sometimes they are very mild, and sometimes again they flare up with an intensity that is truly alarming and uncontrollable. The energy with which those fears become insistent in consciousness, and the motor excitement to which they give rise are really extraordinary. The fear comes like a sudden flood. The energy with which those fears rise into consciousness is often overwhelming. “Fear gets possession of me under circumstances in which my suspicions are, for some reason or other, aroused to activity, all the more so if the suspicions of possible impending evil are awakened suddenly. In other words, the fears arise with stimulations of associations of threatening danger to myself and to my family. I am afraid that something may happen to my children; I fear that they may fall sick suddenly; I fear that some terrible accident may happen to them; I fear that they may fall down from some place, and be maimed or be killed. I fear that my children and other members of my family may be poisoned by people who are not well disposed towards them. I am afraid that they may pick up some food that was infected, or that they may be infected in school by children who happen to suffer from some infectious maladies. I am afraid that my children may be overrun by some vehicles, by automobiles, or that they may be killed in an accident, that they may be killed by a street car, or even that the house may collapse. This latter event has actually taken place when I was a child. In fact, many, if not all of those fears have actually their origin in my experience. “As I write you these lines, memories of such events come crowding upon my mind. Are they the noxious seeds that have been planted on the soil of fear? I am afraid sometimes that even the food I and my children as well as other people eat may give rise to toxic products and thus produce disease. Often in the dead of night, I may come to see my children in order to convince myself that they have no fever, and that they are not threatened by any terrible disease. The very words ‘sickness,’ ‘disease,’ ‘not feeling well,’ ‘death,’ arouse my feeling and sometimes throw me into a panic. I am afraid to use such words in connection with any of my children. I am afraid that the evil mentioned may actually happen.