=Sublimation the Key Word.= In the prevention and in the cure of nervous disorders there is one factor of central importance, and that factor is sublimation—­or the freeing of sex-energy for socially useful, non-sexual ends.  To sublimate is to find vent for oneself and to serve society as well; for sublimation opens up new channels for pent-up energy, utilizing all the surplus of the sex-instinct in substitute activities.  When the dynamic of this impulse is turned outward, not inward, it proves to be one of man’s greatest possessions, a valuable contribution of energy to creative activities and personal relationships of every kind.

=The Failure to Sublimate.= A neurosis is nonconstructive use of one’s surplus steam.  The trouble with a nervous person is that his love-force is turned in on himself instead of out into the world of reality.  This is what his friends mean when they say that he is self-absorbed; and this is what the psychologists mean when they say that a neurotic is introverted.  A person, in so far as he is nervous, does not see other people at all—­that is, he does not see them as real persons, but only as auditors who may be made to listen to the tale of his woes.  His own problems loom so large that he becomes especially afflicted with what Cabot calls “the sin of impersonality”; or to use President King’s words, he lacks that “reverence for personality” which enables one to see people vividly as real persons and not as street-car conductors or servants or merely as members of one’s family.  To be sure, many a so-called normal individual is afflicted with this same kind of blindness; here as elsewhere the neurotic simply exaggerates.  Engrossed in his own mental conflicts and physical symptoms, he is likely to find his interest withdrawing more and more from other people and centering upon himself.

=Sublimation and Religion.= We do not need psychology to tell us that engrossment in self is a disastrous condition.  When the psycho-analyst says that the life-force must be turned out, not in, he is approaching from a new angle the truth as it is found in the gospel,—­“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” and “thy neighbor as thyself.”  Religion provides the love-object in the Creator; altruism provides it in the “neighbor.”  Christianity and psychology agree that as soon as love ceases to be an outgoing force, just so soon does the individual become an incomplete and disrupted personality.[70]

[Footnote 70:  For emphasis on religion as a means to sublimation, see Freud, Putnam, Pfister, James, and DuBois.]

=Carlyle’s Doctrine of Work.= “Produce! produce! produce!” Life for a social being involves not only rich personal relationships, but absorbing, creative work.  No nervous person is cured until he is willing to take and to keep a “man-size job.”  A good piece of work is not only the sign of a cure; it is the final step without which no cure is complete.