on does, this negative variety refuses even to look
with the naked eye. To dream is easier than to do; to build up
phantasies is easier than to build up a reputation or a fortune; to
think a forbidden pleasure is easier than to sublimate.
"Pleasure-thinking" is not only easier than "reality-thinking,"--it is
the _older_ way.

Children gratify many of their desires simply by imagining them
gratified. Much of the difficulty of later life might be avoided if
the little child could be taught to work for the accomplishment of his
pleasures rather than to dream of them. The normal child gradually
abandons this "pleasure-thinking" for the more purposeful thinking of
the actual world, but the child who loiters too long in the realm of
fancy may ever after find it hard to keep away from its borders. His
natural interest in sex, if artificially repressed, is especially
prone to satisfy itself by way of phantasy.

=Turning back to Phantasy.= In later life, when the love-force for one
reason or another becomes too strong to be handled either directly or
indirectly in the real world, there comes the almost irresistible
impulse to regress to the infantile way and to find expression by
means of phantasy. After long experience Freud concluded that phantasy
lies at the root of every neurosis. Jung says that a sex-phantasy is
always at least one determiner of a nervous illness, and Jelliffe
writes that the essence of the neurosis is a special activity of the
imagination.

Such a statement need not shock the most sensitive conscience. The
very fact that a neurosis breaks out is proof that the phantasies are
repellent to the owners of them and are thrust down into the
subconscious as unworthy. In fact, every neurosis is witness to the
strength of the human conscience. No phantasy could cause illness. It
is the phantasy plus the repression of it that makes the trouble, or
rather it is the conflict between the forces back of the phantasy and
the repression. The neurosis, then, turns out to be a "flight from the
real," the result of a desire to run away from a difficulty. When a
problem presses or a disagreeable situation is to be faced, it is
easier to give up and fall ill than to see the thing through to the
end. Here again, we find that nervousness is a regression to the
irresponsible reactions of childhood.

=Maturity versus Immaturity.= We have been thinking of the main causes
of "nerves" and have found them to be infantile habits o