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Schilder's deals with the analysis of 'failure-like neuroses', i.e., of patients without manifest symptoms whose characters are 'related to what psychoanalysis calls moral masochism'. He considers the failure of patients of this type a 'perversion in social function'.
The cases presented are characterized by their lack of suffering. The patients
are not typical masochists. 'All of our four patients are very much satisfied with themselves. The fifth is also comparatively happy. They all give up without a real struggle, and without any real trial. They are either convinced of their own capacities so that trial seems unnecessary, or they are convinced that the will is thwarted anyhow.' Schilder recognizes that this behavior represents an escape; the feeling of guilt is repressed. But he believes that there are at least some cases in which the feeling of guilt is also 'particularly weak on the unconscious level', cases which probably should be diagnosed as 'mental infantilism'.
As to the etiology of these neuroses, the author relates them to specific constellations in early childhood: the parents' attitude consisted in a kind of exaggerated admiration combined with outbursts of aggression. In two cases a fairly detailed account of childhood memories is given; however, it is not clear how much of this was gleaned by psychoanalysis and how much by group-psychotherapy. In two other cases the material presented is limited to a superficial description of the patients' failures and their relation to some unsolved infantile conflict.