Psychoanalytic therory about “the psychopathology of fate” is referred to, and also Freud's description of fate-compulsion (in Anglo-Saxon literature renamed “fate neurosis”), and Roy Schafer's concept of “disclaiming”. The material from an analysis is compared with a short story by Somerset Maugham: “The Force of Circumstances”, which preoccupied the analysand for a period of time. He seemed to have had a fate neurosis in the first part of the analysis but gradually presented traits of a more character-neurotic nature. This is in conformity with the view that fate neurosis cannot be seen as a distinct diagnostic category but rather as an aspect of a more comprehensive neurotic structure.