One-third of the monograph is taken by the case history of a thirty-five-year-old man who three times in his life conceived the desire to get married to a girl with whom he was in love. Each time he changed his mind as soon as he was near the fulfillment of his wish and this change of mind coincided with a somatic oral pathology: the first time he broke a tooth, the second time it was an abscess of a tooth, the third time he contracted tonsilitis. This last sickness developed under the observation of the author. A nearly continuous series of dreams made it possible to reveal a good deal of the unconscious background of the persistent bachelorhood of the patient. No complete psychoanalysis was done, but this shortcoming is amply compensated for by a great wealth of related clinical and literary material which demonstrates the part of oral pathology in certain sexual conflict situations.

More specifically, the author singles out a group of cases of tonsilitis where genital activity proper offers no problems, but where the expectation