=Adaptable Energy.= We neither have to give in to our over-insistent desires nor to deny that they exist.  Man has a power of adaptation.  Just when we seem to run up against a dead wall, to face an irreconcilable conflict, we find a wonderful power of indirect expression that affords satisfaction to all the innate forces without doing violence to the ethical standards which have proved so necessary for the development of character.

Hunger, which, like the reproductive instinct, is stimulated by the changing chemistry of the body, can be satisfied only by achieving its primary purpose, the taking of material food; but the creative impulse to reproduce oneself possesses a unique ability to spiritualize itself and expend its energy in other lines of creative endeavor.  There seems to be some sort of close connection between the especially intense energy of the reproductive instinct and the modes of expression of the instinct for construction; a connection which makes possible the utilization of threatening destructive energy by directing it toward socially valuable work.  Just as we harness the mountain stream and use its wild force to light our cities, or catch the lightning to run our trolley cars, so we find man and woman—­under the right conditions—­easily and naturally switching over the power of their surplus sex-energy to ends which seem at first only slightly related to its original aim, but which resemble it in that they too are self-expressive and creative.  If a person is able to express himself in some real way, to give himself to socially needed work; if he can reproduce himself intellectually and spiritually in artistic production, in invention, in literature, in social betterment, he is drawing on an age-old reservoir of creative energy, and by so doing is relieving himself of inner tension which would otherwise seek less beneficent ways of expression.

The world knew all this intuitively for a long time before it knew it theoretically.  The novelists, who are unconsciously among the best psychologists, have thoroughly worked the vein.  The average man knows it.  “He was disappointed in love,” we say, “and we thought he would go to pieces, but now he has found himself in his work”; or, “She will go mad if she doesn’t find some one who needs her.”  It is only lately that science has caught up with intuition, but now the physicians and psychologists who have had the most intimate and first-hand acquaintance with the human heart are recognizing, to a man, this unique power of the love-instinct and its possibilities for creative work of every sort.[14]

[Footnote 14:  Among those who have shown this connection between the love-force and creative work are Freud, Jung, Jelliffe, White, Brill, Jones, Wright, Frink, and the late Dr. Putnam of Harvard University, who writes:  “Freud has never asserted it as his opinion and it certainly is not mine, that this is the only root from which artistic expression springs.  On the other hand, it is probable that all artistic productions are partly referable to this source.  A close examination of many of them would enable any one to justify the opinion that it is a source largely drawn upon.”—­Human Motives. p. 87.]