This study was limited to a small group of women, diagnosed as paranoid state, without evidence of schizophrenia, in order to reduce the number of variables. The author feels that evidence from these cases refutes Freud's formulation of paranoia in woman as a projective defense against homosexuality. Instead, Modlin sees the process as initiated by a disruption of sexual relations in a fairly normal marriage adjustment, a reactive depression, and then regression with a projective delusional mechanism. In this the threatened loss of the heterosexual self-image is warded off by projection onto conniving women, e.g.: 'It is not that I am unwomanly, but that she is a seductive husband-snatcher'.