s a physical one, and that it is this psychic part which is
most often repressed. He maintains that for complete satisfaction
there must be psychic union between mates, and that gratification of
the physical component of sex when dissociated from psychic
satisfaction, results in an accumulation of tension that reacts badly
on the whole organism.

The psychic tension accumulating in adult sex-relations has its
inception in the mistaken attitude on the part of the wife, who
remains true to her childhood training that any pleasure in sex is
vulgar; or on the part of the man, who reacts to the mood of the wife,
or is held by his own unbroken mother-son complex; or on the part of
both the tension piles up because of society's taboo upon rearing
large families. As the first two factors in this lack of adjustment
grew largely out of some kind of faulty education or from faulty
reaction to early experiences, the only effective way to secure a
better adaptation must be through a re-education which reaches down
to that part of the personality that bears the stamp of the
unfortunate early factors.

=Remaking Ourselves.= As a matter of fact, the science of
psychotherapy or mental treatment is simply the science of
re-education,--a process designed to break up old unhealthy complexes
which disrupt the forces of the individual, and to build up healthy
complexes which adjust him to the social world and enable him to use
his energy in useful ways.

Fortunately, minds can be changed. It is easier to make over an
unhealthy complex than to make over a weak heart, to straighten out a
warped idea than to straighten a bent back. Remarkable indeed have
been some of the transformations in people who are supposed to have
passed the plastic period in life. While it is true that some persons
become "set" in middle life, and almost impervious to new ideas, it is
also true that a person at fifty has more richness of experience upon
which to draw, more appreciation of the value of the good, than has a
person at twenty. If he really wants to change himself, he can do
wonderful things by re-education.

The first step in this re-education is a grasp of the facts. If you
want to pull yourself out of a nervous disorder, first of all learn as
much as you can about the causes of "nerves," about the general laws
of mind and body, and about your own mental quirks. If this is not
sufficient, go to a specialist trained in psychotherapy and let him
help y