He relates how his mother once confessed to him that she found no support in his father and actually felt lonely. On that occasion he wept over his mother’s plight and passed a sleepless night.... His further associations lead him to his father’s fatal illness: it was a slow breaking down due to cancer. He could not take care of his father, and was but of little service to the latter. It was shortly after his father had dismissed his friend. He was still too absorbed in his own troubles. He witnessed with detachment the terrible phases of the dying man’s last struggle. A few days before the end he dreamed that he saw his father’s body lying peacefully on the bier. It was plainly a dream of impatience. He could hardly await his father’s passing away. He declares that he hated his father heartily at the time, because the latter had allowed himself to be induced by the mother to write that letter to his friend. Strangely, he was never so angry with his determined mother as he was with his weak-willed father. During the father’s funeral and upon returning home he was unable to weep. This occurrence is typical of those men for whom a death is the fulfillment of an old wish. In point of fact the father was a burden and drag in the house. The mother sacrificed herself and his death was a release for everybody. Moreover his attitude towards his father had always been rather peculiar. They had never had much in common.... He reports a number of small details illustrating how tirelessly his mother endeavors to bind him to herself. Yesterday afternoon he was at the theater and later went to the _Prater_. In the evening he found his mother morose and pouting. She looked at him reproachfully saying: “Did it not occur to you during your rounds of pleasure that you are leaving your poor mother alone?” He must think only of his mother and always feel that he is bound to her forever. Aunts and neighbors always come to him to tell him how much suffering he causes his poor mother by neglecting her. While he was still suffering acutely the distress caused by his mother’s breaking up his friendship with Ernst, he met the latter once secretly and they went to a theater together. The mother knew it in some way and when he returned home he found her in bed, her head wrapped in towels. Her disappointment made her ill and she had to keep to her bed for a week. Finally an aunt accused him of behaving like a murderer towards his mother. She cannot understand that passion of his for that friend! Was he perhaps in love with the young man’s sister? Happy to have a way out of his difficulty suggested to him he answered the question in the affirmative. That roused his mother’s jealousy to the highest pitch. But she soon convinced herself that she had been fooled by him and that he had no interest whatever in the girl.