The authoress illustrates her subject by material from the cases of three women patients. She cites Abraham's views that optimism depends on a happy sucking period. She holds that infantile omnipotence must be adjusted to reality before an individual can develop into a true optimist; where the belief in the magical power of the wish triumphs, optimism will be illusory. In a woman optimism depends further on the time and the

way in which she has accepted her lack of the penis and this again depends largely on the attitude of her environment towards this lack.

The authoress thinks that in men optimism is often linked with a sense of oneness with Mother-earth, and is thus presumably bound up with phantasies of a happy return to the mother's body. There seems to be some connection between humour and optimism. The difference appears to be that in humour the indulgent attitude of the super-ego is momentary while in optimism it is permanent.