The author reviews the literature to show how common is the idea that repressed hostility causes headache. He also demonstrates how some authors find themselves in difficulties when they wish to describe fully the mechanism of migraine. Their erroneous interpretation is motivated by their surrender to a very severe superego which has been projected into the environment in order to deny their masochistic guilt. It is more agreeable to think of oneself as the attacker than to be confronted by a masochistic need.