A masochistic woman who was frightened by acceptance of the role of painful dependence used pathological stealing as an escape from the intolerable conflict. When analysis removed some of her defenses, her conception of femininity became colored by the cruel and destructive fantasies of her childhood. Intermittently, then, she faced two unacceptable alternatives: either to face her feminine role and undergo the tortures implicit in those childhood fantasies, or to regress to psychosis. Instead, in a hysterical twilight state she acquired transient femininity by stealing some object of female clothing, thus symbolically gaining female sexuality without paying the price of suffering.