had imagined that each illness might mean cancer, but had successfully concealed this thought. The idea of death and the fear it excited had thus become constellated in a large _unconscious_ complex derived from past experiences which included the fainting episode, her mother’s death from cancer and the possibility of having cancer herself. This last was still _consciously believed_ and was very real to her. Without pursuing further the details it is evident that although the meaning of fainting—death—was in the fringe of consciousness and subconscious, it had as a setting a large group of fear-inspiring experiences, more particularly those involving cancer. But there was no conscious association between her fear of fainting and that of cancer. _Of this setting, during a phobic attack, only the ideas of fainting and fear-inspiring death enter the various zones of consciousness._ As to why this apparently unsophisticated idea of death still _persisted_ in connection with that of fainting is another problem with which we are not concerned at this moment. We should have to consider more specifically the content of the setting in which, besides the cancer-belief, probably subconscious self-reproaches would be found. =Meaning may be the conscious elements of a functioning larger subconscious complex.=—However, whatever be its conscious constituents, obviously meaning must be derived from antecedent experiences and without such experiences no idea can have meaning. If, then, antecedent experiences determine the meaning of the idea, it is _theoretically_ possible, particularly with insistent ideas, that the conscious elements involved in meaning are, with many ideas at least, only part and parcel of a larger complex which is for the most part unconscious. That is to say, a portion of this complex—perhaps the larger portion represented by the residua of past experiences—would, under this hypothesis, be unconscious while certain elements would arise in consciousness as the meaning of a given idea. Under such conditions a hidden subconscious process would really determine the conscious setting which gives the meaning. The whole setting would be partly conscious and partly hidden in the unconscious. Such a mechanism may be roughly likened to that of a clock, so far as concerns the relation of the chimes and hands to the works concealed inside the case. Though the visible hands and the audible chimes appear to indicate the time, the real process at work is that of the hidden mechanism. To inhibit the chime or regulate the time rate the mechanism must be altered. And so with an insistent idea: The unconscious part of the complex setting must be altered to alter the meaning of the idea. Of course the analogy must not be carried too far as in the case of the clock the chimes and hands are only epiphenomena, while conscious ideas are elements in the functioning mechanism.