strong. The
victory goes to neither side; the tug of war ends in a tie. Since the
energy of the nervous person is divided between the effort to repress
and the effort to gain expression, there is little left for the
external world. There is plenty of energy wasted on emotion, physical
symptoms, phantasy, or useless acts symbolizing the struggle.

A neurotic is a normal person, "only more so." His impulses are the
same impulses as those of every other person; his complexes are the
same kind of complexes, only more intense. He is an exaggerated human
being. He may be only slightly exaggerated, showing merely a little
character-weakness or a slight physical symptom, or he may be so
intensified as to make life miserable for himself and everybody near
him. It is quantity, not quality, that ails him, for he differs from
his steady-going neighbor not in kind but in degree. More of him is
repressed and a larger part of him is fixed in a childish mold.

=Tricking Ourselves.= A neurosis is a confidence game that we play on
ourselves. It is an attempt to get stolen fruit and to look pious at
the same time,--not in order to fool somebody else but to fool
ourselves.

No nervous symptom is what it seems to be. It is an arch pretender. It
pretends to be afraid of something it does not fear at all, or to
ignore something that interests it intensely. It pretends to be a
physical disease, when primarily it has nothing to do with the body;
and the person most deluded is the one who "owns" the symptom. Its
purpose is to avoid the pain of disillusionment and to furnish relief
to a distracted soul which dares not face itself.

Although the true meaning of a symptom is hidden, there is fortunately
a clue by which it can be traced. Sometimes it takes the art of a
psychic detective to follow the clues down, down through the different
layers of the subconscious mind, until the troublesome impulses and
complexes are found and dragged forth,--not to be punished for
breaking the peace but to be led toward reconciliation. But "that is
another story," and belongs to another chapter. We are approaching THE
WAY OUT.

PART III--THE MASTERY OF "NERVES"

CHAPTER VIII

_In which we pick up the clue_

THE WAY OUT

THE SCIENCE OF RE-EDUCATION

There is a story of an Irishman at the World's Fair in Chicago.
Although his funds were getting low, he made up his mind that he would
not go home without a ride on a camel. For several minutes h