It is postulated that Tausk resolved an early crisis in his life with the aid of a play he wrote, Twilight. The play contains noteworthy features both as an instrument of untutored self-analysis and as a blueprint for the curse of his future. Comparisons between Tausk and Franz Kafka, a compatriot of the same era, show remarkable similarities in their life histories and fantasies. Tausk's repetitive creative and self-destructive personality trends, both before and after he became an analyst, are traced. They apparently contributed to his insight into motives and mechanisms in other people but brought in their wake reactions that led to increasing narcissism with strong paranoid features. The symbolic aspects of Tausk's suicide are discussed.