the arbitrary, wrong, indefensable limitations which put too many chains
upon the creative spirit mounting from out the depths of animal darkness.
The nervous sufferer possesses the soul of a child, that arbitrary
limitation which represses and the reason for which is not understood. To be
sure it attempts to identify itself with the morals, but by this it is
brought into great conflict and disharmony with itself. On one side it
wishes to submit, on the other to free itself--and this conflict we speak of
as the neurosis.

If this conflict in all its parts were clearly a conscious one, then
naturally no nervous phenomena would arise from it. These phenomena arise
only when man cannot see the reverse side of his being and the urgency of
his problem. Only under these circumstances does the phenomena occur which
allows expression to the non-conscious side of the soul.

The symptom is thus an indirect expression of the nonconscious wishes,
which, were they conscious to us, would come into a violent conflict with
our conceptions of morals. This shadowy side of the soul withdraws itself,
as has once been said, from the control of the consciousness; by so doing
the patient can exert no influence upon it, cannot correct it and can
neither come to an understanding with it nor get rid of it, because in
reality the patient absolutely does not possess the subconscious passions.
Rather they are repressed from out the hierarchy of the conscious soul, they
have become autonomous complexes, which can be brought again into
consciousness only with great resistance through analysis. Many patients
think that the erotic conflict does not exist for them; in their opinion the
sexual question is nonsense; they have no sexual feeling. These people
forget that in place of that they are crippled by other things of unknown
origin. They are subject to hysterical moods, bad temper, crossness, from
which they, no less than their associates, suffer. They are tortured by