This possibility of transference of energy of desire from one form to another is of the utmost importance to the psycho-analyst. By the technique of psycho-analysis the energy of repressed desires is first freed from deleterious objectives, and then transferred to legitimate ones. The energy behind the conflicts which lead to alcoholism or drug-taking may, under suitable conditions, be transferred to energy of higher types of desire with more suitable outlets. These processes are known as _transference_ and _sublimation_ respectively. It may be taken that every mind has a given amount of psychic energy which _must_ find somewhere its suitable outlet in satisfying desire, whether for accomplishment or for enjoyment. We may here again take the opportunity of stating that the efficiency or lack of efficiency demonstrated in different individuals in their attempts to transfer the energy of desire from a lower to a higher channel depends not only on heredity and constitutional circumstances but to an extraordinary degree on the individual’s environment and the actions of the parents in the first three or four years of his life. The reason why seemingly excellent parents produce sometimes execrable progeny becomes clearer under psycho-analysis. The over-strict parent produces one type of inefficient children, the parent who spoils produces other inefficient types. The nurse, the nursery, the casual visitor, the trivial conversations, the unconsidered sights and experiences, all have a terrific influence in the first few years of the child’s life. Parents do not realise that conventional or arbitrary methods of education, whether in one direction or another, are not going to effect the results they expected. The primitive unconscious mind of the child understands and absorbs in a manner that civilised man does not recognise. The bad father may by accident or _neglect_ produce an excellent child--the good father with all his designs may produce a bad one. This is not an attempt to show that as the child grows up _all_ its actions are dependent on the early environment; merely that we can never compare the good or bad in individuals; that an apparent failure, owing to his inefficiency of powers of sublimation, may yet be devoting more energy to ascent than the successful saint whose early environment made for efficient transference of energy of desire. Some of the commonest of errors made by well-meaning parents will come to light at a later period. “_They teach their children to repress erotic and other desires but they omit at the same time to assist the development of that sublimation of them which is absolutely essential._” §4