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Five cases of a psychotic type occurring under emotional stress and ending in recovery are presented. These cases resemble schizophrenia but differ from it in some aspects and in their course. The resemblance to schizophrenia consists in defects of attention, hallucinations, delusions, impairment of judgment, etc. The difference from schizophrenia is the invariable presence of emotional stress at the time of onset, the rapid beginning, the occurrence of disorientation and of amnesia for the period of psychosis and, finally, recovery. The authors believe it not unlikely that these psychoses are produced by stresses of civil life and that the recognition of such cases may materially change statistics regarding remissions of treated and untreated patients with schizophrenia. In reviewing the literature on this subject, the authors found the first similar case in the German literature (Ganser, Delbruck, etc.) eighty-five years ago. Only four papers dealing with this question were found in the literature of the last fifteen years. They see another reason for the publication in the fact that the subject is not unrelated to 'current psychiatric [psychoanalytic?] thought'.