His mother was the central figure in L’s anxieties. He evolved quite independently a theory which had been anticipated many centuries before by some primitive people and philosophers. He believed that his mother had a spirit which left her body the moment any member of the family left her alone, and that this spirit was forced to undergo all sorts of trials and tests. The spirit would always come back to his mother’s body before any member of the family spoke to her. In some magical fashion his own acts relieved the burden which was laid upon his mother’s spirit. Even in adulthood, he found an occasional fantasy which was reminiscent of the preoccupations of those years. Not long ago he was floating on the water in a swimming pool and found himself thinking that his mother could never hold her head under water as long as he could hold his foot under water. With all his timidity, removal to a strange environment was a severe trial. Just before high-school days his family moved to a new community, and he never quite overcame his sense of strangeness. He had always been a coward, shrinking from physical combat. One of his first memories is of sitting on a curb with an older brother, who suddenly proposed that he should fight the little brother of another boy. L began to fight, but was overcome by fear and ran away. Later he was the center of a small clique of children in his block, all of whom were very much his junior. One of his group bragged about L’s physical prowess to the leader of another group, but when the challenge was issued L backed down. He was worried by his own timidity, but seemed unable to do anything about it. He made a handful of friends in the new environment, but was on intimate terms with no one. With one boy he was able to talk somewhat freely about sexual fantasies, and L once proposed a sexual experiment to a neighbor girl. When he was repulsed, his guilt was enormously increased. About this time L began to think seriously of entering the ministry, so that he might always think “pure” thoughts and do “pure” things. When he went to college he at first roomed with boys from his high school, but they talked so openly about sex that he felt the atmosphere was deplorable and demoralizing. Before the month expired, he sought a new room and went into a solitary retreat. During the first year of his college life he was acutely religious and besought church services regularly. He sought guidance from the sermons upon personal and political questions.