It should always be borne in mind by both husband and wife that the love impulse is uniformly to take precedence over the ego (social) impulse, a precedence that, however, in our present competitive society it is very difficult to give. But it is worth every thought that can be devoted to it; to refine the pattern, to ennoble the picture, of marital life. § 6 A common misapprehension that psychoanalysis leads to promiscuity in sexual relations needs emphatic correction. The reasoning wrested out of psychoanalytical findings runs somewhat as follows: Most modern ills and notably neurotic disturbances, mild and severe, are the result of the repression brought to bear on the sex instinct by modern civilized life. Therefore, in order to avoid or cure these multitudinous ills, the individual whose natural instincts have been repressed, must dig them up, with great toil and at great expense of time and money, and give them free play in spite of the prohibitions of society. Indeed, in this country, psychoanalysts, of the first rank in other respects, have been said to recommend both men and women patients to make what arrangements they could to indulge in sexual intercourse, even if unmarried.[1] Now fully admitting that the mental and physical troubles of these patients, and all others who suffer from ills of psychic origin, arise from the repression of the sexual instinct, it still shows a far too great tendency on the part of their advisers to temporize and compromise with facts, if they give this advice. For, while a conflict between two forces, one or both of which were in the unconscious, is more satisfactorily and successfully carried on if the two forces are brought out into the open light of consciousness, the conflict still remains, and is only shifted to another field where it may go on as before, and with unabated fierceness. The conflict between the individual and society is just as great whether a man takes it out in himself through a neurosis or gives up the neurosis and takes a prostitute or a regular mistress, neither of which has the sanction of society. In the case of many neurotics the cure is worse than the disease simply because the social pressure becomes clearer to the individual if he actually does, even in secret, the things he had before only unconsciously wished. For him the conflict not only is not resolved but is worse, for if like the majority of neurotics he is of a more sensitive type than the average person the contrast between his actions and the implicit demands of his environment will be all the greater. He will be doing in reality the very thing he unconsciously desired but feared to do.