The case of illness I will report on here is distinguished by a number of peculiarities that call for emphasis before the presentation. It concerns a young man who collapsed in his eighteenth year after a gonorrheal infection and was completely dependent and unable to exist when he entered psychoanalytic treatment several years later. The decade of his youth leading up to the time of his illness was spent in an almost normal manner, and he completed his high school studies without much disruption. However, his earlier years had been dominated by a severe neurotic disorder that began just before his fourth birthday as anxiety hysteria (animal phobia), then transformed into a compulsive neurosis with religious content, and extended its effects until he was ten years old.