Nor is the connection between alcoholism and emotionalism so far-fetched as it seems. Psycho-analytic investigations have repeatedly revealed the fact that both are indulged in because they remove inhibitions, give vent to repressed desires, and bring a sense of life and power which has somehow been lost in the normal living. Both kinds of spree are followed by the inevitable "morning after" with its proverbial headache, remorse, and vows of repentance but despite all this, both are clung to because the satisfaction they bring is too deep to be easily relinquished. Whenever an emotion quite out of keeping with conscious desire is allowed to become habitual, we may know that it is being chosen by a part of the personality which needs to be uncovered and squarely faced. Nervous symptoms and exaggerated emotionalism are alike evidence of the fact that the wrong part of us is doing the choosing and that the will needs to be enlightened on what is taking place in the outer edge of its domain. In the choice between emotionalism and equanimity, the selection of the former can only be in response to 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.