Do not be afraid of the depression, the feeling of emptiness that will come with your first conscious attempts to free yourself of your fantasy. It can be the beginning of a far richer emotional life than any which depends on an unrealizable daydream. Therefore, persist for a few days in imagining what life will be like if you do not ever realize your daydream. Please notice that your depression does not go beyond a certain depth and that it is not incapacitating; also note that your feeling of deprivation is not unendurable. I am not using auto-suggestion in these last remarks. A persistent daydream has certain characteristics in common with a drug or alcohol habituation. The daydreamer has, over a long period of time, learned to handle reality in terms of her drug--her deep-seated daydream. Without realizing it she has come to feel that, without this psychological narcotic, life would be impossible. She must, in a very real sense, wean herself from it, gradually realize that life without it is not nearly so dreary, so difficult, as she had imagined it would be. The next step in this process is to explode the daydream entirely. This can be done with a few pinpricks of cold logic. Most people, realizing that such daydreams, formed in the heat of youth, have no function in reality, have long ago given them up in favor of living as passionately as possible in the present. The frigid woman, however, having a reason for keeping them alive, has never scrutinized them in the cold light of rationality. I know of one woman who, at the age of thirty-eight, with three children under fifteen years of age, still felt she could become a dancer. As she looked more closely at this conviction she became increasingly surprised at how seriously she really took this fantasy. At length, when she felt really ready to face sacrificing her lifelong fantasy, she wrote a list of facts and questions. I present them here. 1. To become a dancer I would have to study the dance for a minimum of five years; during that time I would have to practice dancing for about eight hours a day. Could I take this discipline? 2. If my mind were able to take such discipline would my body be able to stand up under such arduous work? 3. If I were able to arrange it would I be willing to give up my daily contact and relationship with my three children? 4. If I overcame every obstacle and became a well-known dancer, achieving my wildest dream of success, I would have to go on tour for at least eight months of the year; this would mean separation from my husband and children during that time. Do I want this? Even if I do, could I take it emotionally? The answers to these questions were obviously passionate noes. And the result of such a common-sensical examination of her long-standing fantasy was, at long length, freedom from it.