Some years ago, we reported a study of the illness experience of children according to the presence or absence of a psychoneurotic condition in each of their parents (Buck and Laughton, 1959). It was stated to be part of a larger study of family patterns of illness, including that of possible similarities in the psychiatric histories of husbands and wives. Although the latter was investigated with rather interesting results the work was not published upon completion because we hoped to add to the data. In the last few years, interest in this subject has been revived, particularly by the work of Pond et al. (1963) and Kreitman (1964). It now seems desirable that our results should be published because of their interesting relationship to those of the more recent investigations.