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Certain problems of character and symptom formation are considered from the point of view of the structural hypothesis and the signal theory of anxiety. Conflict is the result of opposing tendencies among the id, ego, and superego and cannot take place, as some have contended, within these agencies. In regard to regression, it is important not to treat all derivatives of regressively activated instinctual drives as though they originated in the phase in which the particular component drive was dominant. An oral fantasy, for instance, may derive from the phallic (oedipal) phase rather than from the oral. Preoedipal experiences are important in shaping the conflict of the Oedipal phase through patterning the drives, affecting the precursors of the superego, and influencing the ego in its selection of defenses, but they are not central to the conflict in the neuroses. This lies in the Oedipal phase. Only by this time are the psychic agencies sufficiently developed to make true intrapsychic conflict possible. Where symptom formation is concerned, it must be remembered that the symptom contains both defense and drive derivatives, not simply the former as has been assumed. An unacceptable derivative, regarded by the ego as a potential danger, stimulates it to various defensive maneuvers. The failure of these results is the symptom, which is closely associated with an underlying fantasy that represents a specific version of how the ego integrated the demands of all components of the psyche and of reality.