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This is the report of an attempt to verify psychoanalytic theory by 'simple factual experimental data'. Thirty-three schizophrenics and ten 'normal' controls were requested to tell short stories appropriate to five given titles, each of which was expected to elicit material from one 'major psychosexual division'. The material was classified into three groups, 'function', 'partial function', and 'dysfunction', according to whether the stories were relevant, partially relevant, or irrelevant to the titles. The largest number of relevant responses was obtained to 'A Story About a Hero' and to 'A Story of a Child of Five', while stories about 'An Ideal Family', 'Best Friends', and 'Romance' produced very few 'function' responses. The authors conclude that they have obtained 'significant experimental proof of the theory that in telling a story schizophrenics will tend to function best in a purely narcissistic environment and that the capacity to function decreases as the more mature levels of psychosexual development are reached'. The classification of the few stories quoted seems quite arbitrary and the authors' knowledge of psychoanalysis is so elementary that one suspects a strong subjective bias in their results. Their technique appears primarily to test ego functions and has much more in common with the thematic apperception and similar tests (to which no reference is made) than to any known play procedure.