ompletely deenergize the
strongest man. Then there is hope deferred, and disappointment, the
frustration of desire and purpose, helplessness before insult and
injustice, blame merited or unmerited, the feeling of failure and
inevitable disaster. There is the unhappy life situation,--the mistaken
marriage, the disillusionment of betrayed love, the dashing of parental
pride. The profoundest deenergization of life may come from a failure of
interest in one's work, a boredom due to monotony, a dropping out of
enthusiasm from the mere failure of new stimuli, as occurs with
loneliness. Any or all of these factors may bring about a neurasthenic,
deenergized state with lowering of the functions of mind and body. We
shall discover how this comes about farther on.

What part does a subconscious personality take in all this and in
further symptoms? Is there a subconsciousness, and what is it?

In answer, the majority of modern psychologists and psychopathologists
affirm the existence of a subconscious personality. One needs only
mention James, Janet, Ribot, McDougall, Freud, Prince, out of a host of
writers. Whether they are right or not, or whether we now deal with a
new fashion in mental science, this can be affirmed--that every human
being is a pot boiling with desires, passions, lusts, wishes, purposes,
ideas, and emotions, some of which he clearly recognizes and clearly
admits, and some of which he does not clearly recognize and which he
would deny.

These desires, passions, purposes, etc., are not in harmony one with
another; they are often irreconcilable and one has to be smothered for
the sake of the other. Thus a sex feeling that is not legitimate, an
illicit forbidden love has to be conquered for the sake of the purpose
to be religious or good, or the desire to be respected. So one may
struggle against a hatred for a person whom one should love,--a husband,
a wife, an invalid parent, or child whose care is a burden, and one
refuses to recognize that there is such a struggle. So one may seek to
suppress jealousy, envy of the nearest and dearest; soul-stirring,
forbidden passions; secret revolt against morality and law which may
(and often do) rage in the most puritanical breast.

In the theory of the subconscious these undesired thoughts, feelings,
passions, wishes, are repressed and pushed into the innermost recesses
of the being, out of the light of the conscious personality, but
nevertheless acting on the personali