This contribution concerns a fifty-eight-year-old patient who suffered from ideas of persecution for some fifteen years which took the form of feeling that his vocal chords were being used by important persons who transmitted their voices through his voice by special communicating devices. As these ideas decreased in intensity, the character of his symptoms changed in that he felt that these people became benevolent and protective toward him.

Arnow attempts to explain these 'verbal hallucinations' as an attempt to integrate previously hostile introjections. This attempt is not completely successful and the reintrojection of the benevolent superego remained imperfect so that the powerful figures still influenced him from outside. This symptom appears to lie closer to a successful reintegration of the personality than the classical auditory hallucination.