The case of Frau Emmy von N. is re-examined from the perspective of the author's own theory of the paranoid process. Meissner's thesis is that the memories of traumatic events uncovered by Freud through hypnosis may not have been the etiologic factors in Frau Emmy's disorder, but may instead have been memories which had been preserved and organized by the patient to reinforce and sustain an already existing sense of herself as a victim, itself an expression of her pathological narcissism. He suggests that this pathological narcissism also manifested itself in the patient's sense of inferiority and in her