DISCUSSION: Dr. Martin Stein agreed with Dr. Rittenberg's emphasis on the origins of charm in primitive magic and its associations with states of consciousness. His personal experience with such patients, however, failed to correspond to Dr. Rittenberg's emphasis on sleepiness as a reaction to the patient's seductive charm. Rather, he found such patients more likely to foster in him a kind of intellectual flirtation accompanied by the temptation to enjoy the process at the expense of analytic understanding and effective interpretation. He suggested that further study of this phenomenon in the termination phase might reveal a good deal about the role of the hostility underlying the charming transference, to which the analyst may respond with his own countertransference hostility. If these are undetected and acted out, the analysis will be threatened with failure. Dr. Rittenberg had discussed