The war neuroses, in so far as they differ from the ordinary neuroses of peace time through particular peculiarities, are to be regarded as traumatic neuroses, whose existence has been rendered possible or promoted through an ego-conflict. In Abraham’s contribution there are plain indications of this ego-conflict; the English and American authors whom Jones quotes have also recognised it. The conflict takes place between the old ego of peace time and the new war-ego of the soldier, and it becomes acute as soon as the peace-ego is faced with the danger of being killed through the risky undertakings of his newly formed parasitical double. Or one might put it, the old ego protects itself from the danger to life by flight into the traumatic neurosis in defending itself against the new ego which it recognises as threatening its life. The National Army was therefore the condition, and fruitful soil, for the appearance of war neuroses; they could not occur in professional soldiers, or mercenaries. The other feature of the war neurosis is that it is a traumatic neurosis, such as is well known to occur in peace time after fright or severe accidents, without any reference to an ego-conflict. The theory of the sexual aetiology of the neuroses, or as we prefer to call it, the sexual hunger (libido) theory, was originally put forward only as regards the transference neuroses of peace conditions, and can be easily demonstrated in them by using the analytic technique. But its application to those other affections, which more recently we have grouped together as the narcissistic neuroses, meets with difficulties. Ordinary cases of Dementia praecox, Paranoia and Melancholia are fundamentally very unsuitable material for the proof of the sexual hunger (libido) theory and for reaching an understanding of it, for which reason psychiatrists, who neglect the transference neuroses cannot be reconciled to it. The traumatic neuroses (of peace time) have always been reckoned to be the most refractory in this respect, so that the appearance of the war neuroses does not add any fresh factor to the former situation. Only by advancing and making use of the idea of a “narcissistic sexual hunger (libido)”, that is to say, a mass of sexual energy that attaches itself to the ego and satisfies itself with this as otherwise it does only with an object, has it been possible to extend the sexual hunger (libido) theory to the narcissistic neuroses, and this entirely legitimate development of the concept of sexuality bids fair to do for these severer neuroses and for the psychoses all that one can expect from an empirically and tentatively progressing theory. The traumatic neurosis of peace time will also fit into this group when researches into the correlation undoubtedly subsisting between shock, anxiety, and narcissistic sexual hunger (libido) have reached success.