Sometimes the regression does play an overwhelming part in later years, but even then one must not ascribe too little importance to accidental experiences. It is well known that, in the later course of a neurosis, the accidental events and the regression together form a vicious circle. The withdrawal from the experiences of life leads to regression, and the regression aggravates the resistances towards life. In the conception of regression psychoanalysis has made one of the most important discoveries which have been made in this sphere. Not only has the earlier exposition of the genesis of neurosis been already subverted, or at least widely modified, but, at the same time, the _actual conflict_ has received its proper valuation. The Significance of the Actual Conflict In the case I have described, we saw that we could understand the symptomatological dramatization as soon as it could be conceived as an expression of the actual conflict. Here the psychoanalytic theory agrees with the results of the association-experiments, of which I spoke in my lectures[10] at Clark University. The association-experiment, with a neurotic person, gives us a series of references to certain conflicts of the actual life, which we call complexes. These complexes contain those problems and difficulties which have brought the patient into opposition with himself. Generally we find a love-conflict of an obvious character. From the standpoint of the association-experiment, neurosis seems to be something quite different from what it appeared from the standpoint of the earlier psychoanalytic theory. Considered from the standpoint of the latter theory, neurosis seemed to be a growth which had its roots in earliest childhood, and overgrew the normal structure. Considered from the standpoint of the association-experiment, neurosis seems to be a reaction from an actual conflict, which is naturally found also among normal people, but among them the conflict is solved without too great difficulty. The neurotic remains in the grip of his conflict, and his neurosis seems, more or less, to be the consequence of this stagnation. So we may say that the result of the association-experiments tell in favor of the theory of regression.