Three assertions about emotions are assumed to be valid: that they exist only in the ego, that they can affect behavior without reaching consciousness, and that many if not all can be reduced to signals. In the patient on whom the author reports, activated emotions reached maximum intensity: anxiety always became terror, aversion became hatred. Any unpleasant feelings submerged the whole ego, producing a feeling of nonexistence. An adequate perceptive system (a most important achievement in ego development) has two important results: the correct depiction of reality without interference by id drives and, conversely, a relative freedom of the psychic apparatus from external excitation. The schizophrenic fails in both respects; he suffers from 'colliding energies'. He deals with emotions as if they were instinctual drives. For the neurotic, instinctual drives are the main enemy of the ego. For the schizophrenic, the emotions are the primary enemy. The schizophrenic ego faces the grave task of acquiring and retaining a sense of its own identity.