This is an extract from a letter sent to me by the patient’s husband: “ ... She had another attack. It did not last long, and it was not severe. She dreamt several times a week. I shall try to relate them as accurately as possible. She dreamt that I left the room for a while. Our baby was asleep in the next room. All of a sudden she heard baby cry out: ‘Mamma, I am afraid.’ She told the baby to come to her as she herself was afraid to leave the bed. Baby came to her. The child looked frightened, her face pale with fear, exclaiming ‘Mamma, a devil.’ As the child cried out, my wife heard a noise in the room, something moved close by. She became scared. It seemed to her that something terrible and unknown was after her. She wanted to scream for help, but could not. A hand was stretched out after her to catch her. She woke up in great terror. Another time she dreamt that she was in a hall way. She saw a woman and became frightened. It was the same crazy woman. My wife is exceedingly nervous, and is in fear that something awful is going to happen to her or to the family.” A rich, subconscious dream-life of agonizing fears was thus revealed, a life of terrors of which the patient was unaware in her waking state. The dreams referred to the same central nucleus, the shock and fears of her early childhood. Worries about self and family kept up and intensified the present fear states. Her selfishness has no bounds, her fears have no limits. The symptoms of the “fear set,” as in all other psychopathic cases, took their origin in the impulse of self-preservation with its accompanying fundamental fear instinct. This patient was cured after a long course of hypnotic treatment. CHAPTER XXII RECURRENT FEAR STATES,--PSYCHOLEPSY There are cases in which the nature of the psychopathic states stands out more clearly and distinctly than in others. They occur periodically, appearing like epileptic states, in a sort of an explosive form, so that some authorities have mistaken them for epilepsy, and termed them psychic epilepsy. My researches have shown them to be recurrent explosions of subconscious states, which I termed _psycholepsy_. They really do not differ from general psychopathic states, but they may be regarded as classic _pseudo-epileptic_, or _psycholeptic_ states; they are classic _fear-states_--_states of panic_.