Thus there runs through the soul of mankind an endless chain of identifications ranging from the normal to the pathological. The child that puts its father’s hat on its head identifies itself with him just as certainly as the lunatic who thinks himself Napoleon. Both have realized their wishes. But there is this difference between them: In the normal the identification is held under control by the force of facts, whereas in the lunatic the identification has suffered a fixation. A delusion is frequently only a wholly successful identification in the interests of the desire to escape from painful realities. Delusion and truth are plastic conceptions. Who could presume to define where truth ceases and delusion begins? From Schopenhauer’s point of view our whole world-philosophy might be said to be only a process of identification. And truth is nothing but the transference of our own limited knowledge upon the outer world. REFUGE IN DISEASE The psychological study of disease is still, alas! a very young and immature science. We have been held so long in the thrall of the materialistic delusion of having to look for bacilli and other micro-organisms behind all diseases that we have almost wholly neglected the psychic factor in disease. It now seems that these psychic factors play the chief role in the so-called “nervous” diseases, whereas all the other “causes,” namely, the predisposition, heredity, infection, etc., it now turns out, do play a certain role, not an unimportant one, it is true, but yet a secondary one. The influence of emotional disturbance upon these diseases has only recently received careful study. We have learned that psychic causes may play a great role in the occurrence and the prevention of disease. We may confidently assert that without the presence of a psychic component which invokes the disease hardly a single case of nervous disease could occur. Paradoxical as this may sound it is nearer the truth than the orthodox teachings of our day. For who does not recollect times in his childhood when he longed to be sick that he might not have to go to school, and that he might at the same time be petted and indulged by his parents? A little of this infantilism persists with us throughout life. Hysterics especially are distinguished by the infantilism of their thoughts, their feelings, and their ideas. This being so, we must agree with Bleuler when he asserts that the most common cause of hysteria is the desire to take refuge in disease. It will be of interest here to reproduce Bleuler’s report of one of his cases (from his book on “affectivity, suggestibility, and paranoia,” published by Karl Marhold in 1906).