By means of nine brief clinical examples, the author demonstrates the various impulses which can be canalized into the drive to acquire knowledge. Among these motivations he particularly notes sexual curiosity, sibling rivalry, and aggressive, overcompensatory reactions to feelings of intellectual or physical inferiority. The wish for parental approval may also constitute a strong motive. The child's early life is organized around the acquisition of motor skills with accompanying physical competition. When the child cannot compete physically on an equal basis with his fellows, he often turns prematurely to the field of intellectual competition. If the child's reaction to frustration is violent, then the drive to intellectual achievement may be too highly colored by hostile components and academic success may precipitate a neurosis through activating the sense of guilt. The author's cases are somewhat too brief and his psychopathology is too elliptical to completely clarify his opinions.