This paper describes the appearance, within a few months, of psychosis in two brothers and a sister. From the standpoint of descriptive psychiatry the three case reports are adequate and complete: blood pressures, urinalyses, blood counts—all these are reported. But the co-authors seem to be entirely ignorant of the fact that, from the standpoint of mental mechanisms, these three cases contain material interesting and even remarkable. Hence the paper is as dry as dust and as barren of interest as a case report typical of the clinical psychiatry of two decades ago. In their comment on the cases the co-authors discuss 'contagious insanity' as it has been discussed in French psychiatric literature; but they are apparently unaware of an important German literature on this subject, both Freudian and non-Freudian. Indeed, by failing to apply psycho-analytic interpretative methods to these three cases of so-called 'contagious insanity' the co-authors of this paper lost an opportunity to make what would have been, perforce, an intriguing and most instructive contribution.