=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.