Fromm reports on a child, aged ten, who since the age of two, following an attack of bilateral otitis media, had been mistakenly regarded as suffering from deaf-muteness. When the child was observed to react when a pencil accidentally fell behind its back, further studies were initiated. These disclosed that the child did respond to some acoustic stimuli and not to others. Experiments showed that hearing was not dependent on the loudness of the sound nor of its pitch but that purely psychological factors were responsible: the child heard when the source of sound was an object with libidinal cathexis; it did not hear sounds made by objects in which it was not interested, which it feared or disliked. The child was similarly found able to speak. The illness was considered one of 'Psychic Deafness', a syndrome described by Theodore Heller in 1894. It is characterized by pseudo deaf-muteness in children in whom deafness is due to psychologic factors and not to any pathologic condition of the hearing apparatus, central or peripheral.