Is psycho-analysis able to step into the breach? Theoretically we are justified in assuming that it is, because psycho-analysis alone of all methods of treatment is a causal one. We also have already practical experience to go upon; I refer to the publications of Simmel. I will now briefly speak of my own therapeutic experiences. We psycho-analysts had to be extremely cautious in our treatment of war neuroses, for the addresses at medical congresses and the literature before the war had demonstrated very clearly the refusal of the medical profession to accept the conclusions of our ideas and efforts. When in 1916 I founded a station for neuroses and mental diseases I abstained entirely from all forcible therapy, likewise from hypnosis and other suggestive means, but allowed the patients to abreact in the waking state and sought to make intelligible to them by a kind of simplified psycho-analysis the origin and nature of their suffering. I aimed at arousing in the patients the feeling of being understood, complete relaxation, and improvement. Later the station became that of a pure observation station, chiefly for mental diseases; hence I could only collect isolated therapeutic experiences. The objection that psycho-analysis works too slowly does not hold good as far as our experience goes up to the present. Latterly it has appeared that the patients treated accordingly by the Kaufmann method frequently relapsed when they were withdrawn from the influence of the doctor, or were again exposed to the dangers of the front. Time will show whether the psycho-analytic methods will procure more lasting cures. I will communicate in conclusion the result, instructive in this connection, of the recent treatment of a neurosis carried out in my private practice. I was able in a few weeks to remove a severe phobia in a boy twelve years old, which referred to air raids. The cure persisted when the boy returned home; he was there again daily exposed to the risk of air raids and put up with this situation just like a healthy person. Perhaps this result justifies the expectation that psycho-analysis will in fact in the permanence of its cures fill up the gaps that exist at present. Psycho-analysis, which enables us to penetrate deeper than any other method into the structure of the war neuroses, will perhaps take therapeutic precedence also in the sphere of the war neuroses[6]. 3. DR. ERNST SIMMEL, Berlin.