DR. E. E. SOUTHARD, Boston: Are all these somatic explanations of metaphysics? DR. WILLIAMS: Largely. DR. SMITH ELY JELLIFFE, New York: I recall a note in one of Dr. Jones' papers in which he says "that in the future our reason will be used to explain things. Heretofore it has been used to explain them away." DR. TOM A. WILLIAMS, Washington, D. C.: I am not prepared to make any predictions about a thousand years from now, that is in the air. I mention not the levels at all, nor do I speak of "decerebrate metaphysics." Nor do I speak of metaphysics at all unless one would imply that what I have called supernatural explanations needs must be metaphysical. I do not speak of cerebral functions per se. I was simply speaking of states of feelings. The source and origin I did not go into. I simply made an attempt to imply that such states of feeling were responsible for the discomfort and feeling of inadequacy of the patient, and as Dr. Jelliffe has well repeated that the victim attempts to rationalize this in supernatural fashion and that this may be not at all dependent upon the notion of the supernatural universe he has imbibed as a child. It is a construing of natural means for getting out of a difficulty. Dr. L. E. Emerson, Boston, read a paper entitled "The Psycho-Analytic Treatment of Hystero-Epilepsy."[*] [*] Reserved for publication. DISCUSSION DR. JOHN T. MACCURDY, New York: I have been very much interested in this paper by Dr. Emerson and the part that has interested me most in it has been the therapeutic side. I cannot feel, however, that it adds a great deal to our knowledge of epilepsy, that is, of idiopathic epilepsy. That, of course, is a tremendously difficult problem to tackle. If we are to regard it as a psychosis then we expect it to show other reactions, just as dementia praecox shows manic depressive symptoms. If we are to find out what the epileptic reaction is, we must study it in those who are typically epileptic and nothing else. Or else we may examine those with transitional states grading over into hysteria, for example, excluding from our formulations everything in them that is hysteric. This last case which Dr. Emerson brought forward seemed to me to represent what is essentially an hysteric reaction. The convulsive movements this man went through were symbolic. It is difficult to regard these movements in epilepsy as symbolic because in the true epileptic there is as typical unconsciousness as we know. How can anything going on in almost absolute unconsciousness represent something symbolic to the individual? This is possible however, when the condition grades off from the hysteric side into the epileptic. The fundamental epileptic phenomenon is the disturbance of consciousness, and that is what must be explained.