teristic of finding pleasure in personal ministrations is
plainly a regression to the infantile phase of life. The baby demands
and obtains the center of the stage. Later he has to learn to give it
up, but the neurotic gets the center again and is often very loth to
leave it for a more inconspicuous place.

=Capitalizing an Illness.= Then, too, a neurosis provides a way of
escape from all sorts of disagreeable duties. It can be capitalized in
innumerable ways,--ways that would horrify the invalid if he realized
the truth. Much of the resentment manifested against the suggestion
that the neurosis is psychic in origin is simply a resistance against
giving up the unconsciously enjoyed advantages of the illness. An
honest desire to get well is a long step toward cure.

The purposive character of a nervous illness is well illustrated by
two cases reported by Thaddeus Hoyt Ames.[39] A young woman, the
drudge of the family, suddenly became hysterically blind, that is, she
became blind despite the fact that her eyes and optic nerves proved to
be unimpaired. She remained blind until it was proved to her that a
part of her welcomed the blindness and had really produced it for the
purpose of getting away from the monotony of her unappreciated life at
home. She naturally resented the charge but finally accepted it and
"turned on" her eyesight in an instant. The other patient, a man,
became blind in order to avoid seeing his wife who had turned out to
be not at all what he had hoped. When he realized what he was doing,
he decided that there might be better ways of adjusting himself to his
wife. He then switched on his seeing power, which had never been
really lost, but only disconnected and dissociated from the rest of
his mind.

[Footnote 39: Thaddeus Hoyt Ames: _Archives of Ophthalmology_, Vol.
XLIII, No. 4, 1914.]

That the conscious mind has no part in the subterfuge is shown by the
fact that both patients gave up their artificial haven as soon as they
saw how they had been fooling themselves. The fact remains that every
neurosis is the fulfilment of a wish,--a distorted, unrecognized,
unsatisfactory fulfilment to be sure, but still an effort to satisfy
desire. As Frink remarks, "A neurosis is a kind of behaviour." We
always choose the conduct we like. It is a matter of choice. Does not
this answer our question as to why some people always take unhealthy
suggestions? If we take the bad one, it is because it serves the need