Still another type, and one which presents a much simpler situation, is the expectant or young mother who is scarcely suffering from a mental strain, but has a little let-down in her customary poise and self-control, such as we so often see in convalescents and chronic invalids. Pregnancy, labor, and the puerperium are normal physiological processes, it is true, but they impose a physical tax and the patient is sometimes physically tired and after labor may suffer something akin to surgical shock. The physical weariness may be due to an insufficiency on the part of some one of the internal secretions. But in any event the patient feels tired and may show the same sensitiveness or irritability that any of us show when tired and exhausted and she will merit considerable forbearance on the part of those who surround her. But when we understand, even faintly, the conflicts which are possible in the mental life of the expectant mother—the incompatibility of her age-old maternal instinct and the desires born of our culture and civilization, it is not difficult to see that her adaptive capacity may be sorely tested. The cause of her trouble is not apparent to the patient’s associates but they are aware of its manifestations in the shape of moods, temper tantrums, strange conduct and all sorts of nervous and mental symptoms. If such a patient does not get relief through talking things over, but continues to brood and worry alone—to repress the cause of the conflict—she may not be sufficiently adaptive to endure its ravaging effects, and have a nervous or mental breakdown as a result. It is hoped that the nurse may understand from this discussion that the conflicting thoughts which her patient does not discuss, but buries and keeps below the surface of her mind, are the factor that works harm in her mental life. If the nurse can get her patient to ventilate these thoughts, they will be robbed of much of their power to injure. But this patient, like any one else, will talk freely only when she talks spontaneously and she will do this only when she senses in her nurse a sympathy and a sincere concern over her troubles. Accordingly, the nurse should try to so attune herself as to be receptive to evidences of the patient’s moods and impulses, and possibly from a chance remark get a clue to the repressed desires which are working harm. She will then be able to meet the patient on that ground.