f loving,
rebelling, repressing, and dreaming. We have tried to show that these
habits are able to cause trouble because of their bearing on that
inevitable conflict between the ancient urge of the reproductive
instinct and the later ideals which society has acquired. If this
conflict be met in the light of the present, free from the backward
pull, of outgrown habits, an adjustment is possible which satisfies
both the individual and society. We call this adjustment sublimation.
This is rather a synthesis than a compromise, a union of the opposing
forces, a happy utilization of energy by displacement on more useful
ideas. But if the conflict has to be met with the mind hampered by
immature thinking and immature feeling; if the demands of the
here-and-now are met as if it were long ago; if unhealthy and untrue
complexes, old loves and hates complicate the situation; if to the
necessary conflict is added an unnecessary one; then something else
happens. Compromise of some kind must be made, but instead of a happy
union of the two forces a poor compromise is effected, gaining a
partial satisfaction for both sides, but a real one for neither. The
neurosis is this compromise.

LATER EXPERIENCES

=The Last Straw.= The precipitating cause may be one of a number of
things. It may be entirely within, or it may be external. Perhaps it
is only a quickening of the maturing instincts at the time of
adolescence, making the love-force too strong to be held by the old
repressions. Perhaps the husband, wife, or lover dies, or the
life-work is taken away, depriving the vital energy of its usual
outlets. Perhaps the trigger is pulled by an emotional shock which
bears a faint resemblance to old emotional experiences, and which
stimulates both the repressing and repressed trends and makes the
person at the same time say both "Yes," and "No."[38] Perhaps
physical fatigue lets down the mental and moral tension and makes the
conflict too strong to be controlled. Perhaps an external problem
presses and arouses the old habit of fleeing from disagreeable
reality. Any or all these factors may cooperate, but not one of them
is anything more than a last straw on an overburdened back. No
calamity, deprivation, fatigue, or emotion has been able to bring
about a neurosis unless the ground was prepared for it by the earlier
reactions of childhood.

[Footnote 38: "The external world can only cause repression when there
was already present beforehand