Szasz discusses the role of the ego as distinct from the role of the instinctual life in the formation and course of addiction, and particularly develops the ego's use of the counterphobic mechanism. He found that three patients, one addicted to alcohol and two to smoking, used drugs as a means of exposing themselves to a dangerous situation in order to overcome and master it. An inner anxiety was displaced externally in an attempt to conquer it, as happens regularly in counterphobic symptoms.