His emotional life was further disturbed about this time by the loss of his nurse. P’s stepmother discharged her as soon as she came. Now the nurse was the lad’s main love, for his own mother had been ill for some years before her death. The nurse’s presence gave the child that stable reassurance which is so necessary if the mind of the child is to be kept free from morbid fears. In P’s case, there were strong reasons why this reassurance was necessary. An insane man lived across the street and terrified the passers-by by screaming at everyone who passed. Shortly after his mother’s death P went under ether for a minor operation and was terrified that he would die. The fear of suffocation reappeared in dreams and nightmares, and he was very timid about learning to swim. The stepmother was a disturbing element as a strange and unknown quantity in the environment, and a competitor for the affection of the father. When she discharged the nurse, P thought of her as a malignant influence. His troubles at school were exaggerated by his home changes, and his mind became preoccupied with fantasies directed against his stepmother, or some substitute. P’s father was ambitious for the boy. P remembers him as quick to reprove and slow to praise. He dreamed of his father’s death, and of seeing his father in an accident. But his manifest attitude was one of respectful affection. No matter what happened in the home, he excused his father by reflecting that the stepmother was to blame. However, on the deeper level, it appeared that he held his father accountable for the death of his mother and the disappearance of his nurse. At school P was popular because of his good physique and his docile nature. But his studies came hard. Having failed on college-entrance tests, P bolted and joined the army. The war came along just in time to give him a dignified retreat from an unbearable personal situation. He hoped that his father would think about him with pride. He was bitterly self-accusatory because of his failure to “make good,” and felt a strong unconscious need of punishment. Under these conditions he entered army life with enthusiasm, and made a fine record for personal courage. Once the war was over, his troubles began again. He succeeded in entering college, but college felt like a nursery. He felt that his army experience sophisticated him above schoolboy tasks and chatter. All his old worries returned, complicated by his longing for a new war. He had a long series of difficulties in his occupational life.