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This report, a research project of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, is as thought provoking as its valuable predecessor. The cases studied include two whose lesion appeared during analysis and three referred to the research psychotherapist after diagnosis. The women uniformly demonstrated maternal frustration of their oral needs and substitute gratification by indulgent fathers. The accompanying guilt led to a later masochistic identification with the feared mother and a consistent choice of an inadequately providing male partner, with 'acting out' of these orally derived heterosexual impulses. In line with Engel's findings, these potentially depressive women showed clinical manifestations of the disease following traumatic abandonment or disappointment by their selected objects. The authors hypothesize that the psychological decompensation in depression is accompanied by a 'decompensation of biological mechanisms'. Since cancer of the breast is hormone-dependent, they quote Board's 1956 paper showing a decrease in thyroid and adrenal hormones during depression as possible evidence of estrogen alterations. They suggest studying the relationships between estrogen levels and psychopathological sexual behavior, or disturbances of maternal drive manifested by the previous infertility of many such patients.