TUBERCULOSIS is always the result of more or less complete loss of inspiration and of hope. Patients may appear hopeful, but like the small boy whistling to keep from being scared on the way home on a dark night, they are only bluffing. In a psychoanalysis clinic we unearthed the facts of a young man indulging in the practice of self-abuse was caught in the act by an aunt. She told him he had committed an unforgivable sin, and that he would never develop good moral brains. He had up to the time of this analysis (he was about 30 years of age at the time) attempted many lines of work. His father had set him up in business. He had failed in each one.

In our questioning of him he was asked the following questions:

“Did you believe what your aunt told you at the time?” His answer was, “Yes.”

“Do you still believe it?” “Yes.”

“When you started in some business venture, did you not feel that there wasn’t much use trying; that you could never do like other men, and that you did not have a normal mind?” Again the answer was, “Yes.”

So all those years this deep-seated belief kept him from having any faith in himself or any real ambition to attempt to build up anything permanent.

I nearly overlooked the fact that his aunt also told him he would sometime go insane. When asked if he still thought he might, he said, “Yes.” So this was another reason he thought there was no use to try to build up anything of permanency.

When told that what his aunt said wasn’t true; that the only way to get forgiveness for anything is to cease doing that thing—which he had done at the time, he was finally convinced that he had as good a chance as anyone else. And you can hardly believe the remarkable and permanent change in this man’s attitude toward