Stanton and Schwartz, pursuing their studies of disturbed behavior on mental hospital wards, examine further and in greater detail the relation of excitements and dissociated states to a triangular social process taking place covertly between the patient and two disagreeing members of the staff. It was generally found in the cases studied that the patient served as a bridge over whom two incompatible attitudes were being unconsciously fought out between two important persons in his environment (staff). The struggle is maintained and accentuated by the patient, by his selectivity and distortion of the material which he gathers from each authority and carries to the other, and by the authorities themselves in their inability to face the problem directly. When the latter is accomplished and the disagreement solved, the dissociation and accompanying excitement in the patient promptly disappear. The patient's internal dissociation is related to the external mirror-image disagreement.