70. A highly intelligent subject, H. J., writes me: “Have you already reflected on how we discern certain similarities on certain days and fail to do so at other times? You are undoubtedly aware that neurotics and normal persons are fond of finding resemblances when they formulate identifications. The lover finds that the beloved walks like mother, or that she talks like the latter, and if physically no resemblance can be established he finds the same mental characteristics, the same soul, perhaps the same shortcomings. But I want to speak of an entirely different peculiarity. One forenoon I see a man, who looked enough like my friend, X, the painter, to be taken for the latter. I walk up to him and say: Hello, X,—still under the impression of that mistake. A strange face wearing a beard of familiar form is staring at me. I offer the usual apologetic explanation and go my way. After a while I see again my friend X, this time somewhat dimly, not quite so certain of it as before. I recover from this illusion quickly enough. “By that time my psychologic curiosity is roused and it occurs to me that my wife told me that morning she was going to visit the painter, X, during the forenoon. I listened indifferently to the statement, merely asking her to give him my greetings. But a certain unrest must have risen in the unconscious: your wife goes to the painter who likes her and makes love to her. Nothing of that in consciousness at all. Painters are a light-minded class who do not take such things seriously. Who knows whether your wife will be strong enough to resist? “These secret fears led to a symptomatic act. I accosted a stranger as X, the painter. In other words,—a wish fulfilment. For if I meet X on the street he cannot possibly be in his studio at this time. My wish is that he shall not be at home. My wife shall go to the studio and find: Mr. X is not in.... That wish came up on three different occasions that morning. For I thought I saw Mr. X in the street three different times. Moreover, I project X upon strange faces. Because I think constantly of X, because my mind is wholly preoccupied with him, because I am innerly preoccupied with the uncountenanced thought: what does X now do with your wife?—I see X everywhere. _Ringstrasse_ is filled with men looking like him; every man is a Mr. X.