The contribution of the oral stage to the etiology of phobias is less recognized than the castration anxiety of the Oedipal period or the conflicts of the anal stage. The author points to the oral stage as the basis of phobias in orally deprived patients threatened by their own guilt-provoking hostility in response to the oral frustration. He views the phobia of Little Hans in terms of oral hostility toward a significant object, and presents a series of cases of aichmophobia (dread of sharp objects) as an illustration of the phobic reaction as solution to threatened loss of control over oral hostility and oral incorporative guilt. Each of his clinical examples of aichmophobia, however, appears to demonstrate avoidance with a conscious awareness of the nature of the fear rather than a true phobic reaction in which displacement is operative.