A few descriptive observations are recorded of a more or less normal man with some mild paranoid trends in his personality who, at seventy-four, was faced for six months with death by cancer. He knew that he had fatal cancer and, simultaneously with this recognition

of inevitable reality, he also denied it. He embraced religion after lifelong atheism, believing that in heaven he would again see his father and his first child. Regressive elements were clear in his attitude toward his wife whom he called 'mother', and who he wished to hold his hand at the end. The question as to the possible value of psychotherapy in decreasing anxiety and psychic pain and increasing the resignation to the inevitable is raised. Individuals who know they have fatal illnesses might be spared some of their long psychological suffering if more clinical, psychopathological studies of such terminal illnesses were made.