Avoidance of vocational success is viewed as a phobia and is described from the adaptational point of view. The essential failure is an inhibition of aggression. The significant person from whom retaliation is feared by patients of both sexes is seen as the male. Sibling rivalries are fully as instrumental as Oedipal rivalries. The personality revolves around the paranoid-depressive-obsessive axis in which the paranoid trend predominates and projection is the main defense mechanism. Six clinical cases are reported at some length in support of this hypothesis.