Three cases of pseudoimbecility and learning inhibition are presented whose aetiological similarity may be significant for the syndrome. The mother's exhibition of her naked body and of her anxieties about her own bodily states was common to all the cases. The children's sadistic phantasies and consequent guilt feelings thus became linked with looking and learning. As a condition of the continuance of the close preoedipal relation, the mothers demanded a complete repression of the children's aggression. The mothers confessed to irregular sexual relations which they denied the children knew about. Fathers were either absent or not the object of the mothers' love. These confessions served to hide more guilt-ridden details belonging to earlier phases of the mothers' lives, also unconsciously known to the children. The children identified with the mothers' compulsive lying and deliberate withholding of secrets.

The mothers' damaged capacity to test reality made them unsatisfactory educators, and the