The author suggests that addiction represents a re-enactment of a danger situation—for example, fear of pregnancy, of helplessness, of bodily damage in connexion with pregnancy. These dangers are not avoided by means of phobias, but instead there is an attempt to master the anxieties. This is the essence of the counter-phobic attitude. Gratification follows from the knowledge of having successfully overcome the danger and having emerged unharmed. Failure to employ this mechanism as a result of therapeutic intervention or other cause may lead to disintegration of the ego.