bbery. Being taken hold of by the law does not mend matters in the
least. On the contrary, we see the same tendency to break under the
stress of imprisonment, with the overwhelming burden of an enforced
routine existence, reassert itself as on the former occasion, and in
reaction to the situation he develops a psychosis which necessitates his
transfer to an insane asylum. Placed under the less exacting regime of a
hospital, he soon recovers and avails himself of the first opportunity
for an escape which presents itself. Finding himself again at freedom he
endeavors to find some explanation for his unfortunate position in life
and in the midst of this he discovers that his sister is planning to
return him to the hospital. Even his own sister is against him. He
begins to assume that paranoid view of life which characterizes his
later existence. Now he knows where the trouble lies. The whole world is
against him; no wonder he can't get along; his own sister is trying to
force him back into the hands of his persecutors. His own deficiencies
and incapacities he projects upon the environment. It is the world about
that is at fault; not he. They are after him all the time. He buys a
gun with which to protect himself, and with renewed antagonism against
society in general he defiantly launches upon a career of crime and
vice. Again taken hold of by the law, the old story repeats itself. He
lands in an insane asylum.

Upon an analysis of the content of his psychosis, we find that he
elaborates a story of having been kidnapped in Pennsylvania, upon a
trumped up charge of robbery, taken before a "phony" judge and given an
unjust sentence of five years. The police officers who arrested him were
friends of the murdered police captain at Olean and were hired to do
this job, because he (the patient) was suspected of having had something
to do with this murder. He dreads being placed in the penitentiary
because he knows the warden is likewise against him, being a friend of
the murdered police captain and might perhaps be in league with his
persecutors and take this opportunity of avenging himself upon the
suspected murderer, and sure enough, soon after his arrival at the
penitentiary, the warden has an electrical apparatus rigged up with
which to torture him, etc. His psychosis takes the usual course, he
recovers soon after having been removed from the oppressing environment.

The question arises here, "Are we dealing with a psychosis