How can such behavior be accounted for? Let us suppose that friendly treatment on the part of superiors tends to activate a strong homosexual drive which has been repressed, but which continues to threaten to find expression. This unconscious drive urges him to intimacy with persons in the environment, whereupon his conscience, reacting blindly against the outlaw impulse, seeks to provoke a flight from the environment, and thus to escape from the exciting objects of desire. The outcome is a compromise formation in which the illicit hope of being attacked and violated by the environment is gratified by imagining that the environment has compromised his “honor.” The conscience is gratified by the retreat from temptation. No sooner is B in a new environment than the tension begins to accumulate all over again. By throwing himself with zeal into a new and strange position, where the environment is impersonal, success comes, and with success and habituation to the milieu, there come familiarity and friendship. This produces the familiar strain by reactivating the unconscious homosexuality, and the defending conscience finds another retreat imperative. What specific justification is there for the hypothesis just proposed? B finally came into a situation from which he could scarcely escape by the usual tactics. He scored one of the great successes of his career by being invited to accompany a government commission which investigated conditions abroad, and covered the assignment in brilliant style. He was shown all manner of courtesy. Working under high pressure, he plunged into another assignment, and once more had the journalistic world at his feet. But the strain of success was too much. This time he sought release, not by flight to a new job, which was difficult, but by developing a delusional system. In short, B went into a psychotic phase, and substituted for the world of reality a fantasy world of such sinister dimensions that he was justified in trying to escape from it. Unable to concentrate on his work, he moved restlessly from one town to another, and launched forth on long automobile tours with his wife.