The careful contribution on “Prisoner-of-War Mentality” by Major P. H. Newman (Brit. Med. J., vol. i, p. 8, 1944) has provoked this record of related psychological reactions. The men and women to be described, though not prisoners-of-war, were nevertheless imprisoned by psychological difficulties no less harassing than those material restraints, which, as Newman points out, operate mainly by frustrating or reducing to futility the accustomed interests, satisfactions and tasks of human beings. In the problems of prisoners-of-war a large part is played by retreat into phantasy. It is suggested below that, in human affairs and in clinical work, the scope of this particular reaction to frustration is very much wider than is commonly realized. The range is probably from what is colloquially called “uplift,” to mental states not very unlike psychoses (which have in fact been referred to as “pseudo-psychoses”), and, indeed, possibly to the psychoses themselves.