unrecognized desire.

A nervous person is invariably an emotional person, and as a rule lays
the blame for his condition upon past experiences. But experience is
what happens to us _plus_ the way we take it. We cannot always ward
off the blow, but we can decide upon our reaction. "Even if the
conduct of others has been the cause of our emotion, it is really we
ourselves who have created it by the way in which we have
reacted."[69]

[Footnote 69: DuBois: _Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders_, p.
155.]

One ship drives east, another drives west,
While the self-same breezes blow;
'Tis the set of the sail, and not the gale
That bids them where to go.
Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As we journey along through life;
'Tis the set of the soul that decides the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
REBECCA R. WILLIAMS.

CHAPTER XVI

_In which we find new use for our steam_

FINDING VENT IN SUBLIMATION

THE RE-DIRECTION OF ENERGY

A child pent up on a rainy day is a troublesome child. His energy
keeps piling up, but there is no opportunity for him to expend it. The
nervous person is just such a pent-up child. A portion of his
personality is developing steam which goes astray in its search for
vent; this portion is found to be the psychic side of his sex-life.
Something has blocked the satisfactory achievement of instinctive ends
and turned his interest in on himself.

Perhaps he does not come into complete psychic satisfaction of his
love-life because his wife is out of sympathy or is held back by her
own childish repressions. Perhaps his love-instinct is baffled by
finding itself thwarted in its purpose of creating children,
restrained by the social ban and the desire for a luxurious standard
of living. Perhaps he is jealous of his chief, or of an older
relative whose business stride he cannot equal.

Jung has pointed out how frequently introversion or turning in of the
life-force is brought about by the painfulness of present reality and
by the lack of the power of adaptation to things as they are. But this
lack always has its roots in childhood. The woman who is shocked at
the thought of sex is the little girl who reacted too strongly to
early impressions. The man of forty who is disgruntled because he is
not made manager of a business created by others is the little boy who
was jealous of his father and wanted to usurp his place of power. The
ma