Loewald postulates that the hynoid state, a concept used early by Freud to explain the origins of hysteria, and later discarded for his theory of childhood sexual trauma, actually still has pertinence in our present thinking. The hypnoid state was considered to be a pathological state of awareness or feeling (such as terror or twilight dream state) obtaining in the child when a traumatic event makes impossible direct discharge of feeling and 'associative absorption' of the experience alongside other experiences.

Loewald believes that Freud uses the same concept with different words in his later theory when he considers that it is the 'infantile condition of the