A common thing enough," Mr. Cradock told her, as it were reassuringly.
"Nothing to fight shy of, or be afraid of. But something to be regulated
of course.... Now, the thing is to oppose to this irregular desire of
your daughter's for this man a new and a stronger set of desires. Fight
one group of complexes with another. You can't, I suppose, persuade her
to be analysed? There are good analysts in Rome."

"Oh no. Nan laughs at it. She laughs at everything of that sort."

"A great mistake. A mistake often made by shallow and foolish people.
They might as well laugh at surgery.... Well now, to go into this
question of the battle between the complex-groups...."

He went into it, patiently and exhaustively. His phrases drifted over
Mrs. Hilary's head.

"... a deterrent force residing in the ego and preventing us from
stepping outside the bounds of propriety.... Rebellious messages sent
up from the Unconscious, which wishes to live, love and act in archaic
modes ... conflict with the progress of human society ... inhibitory and
repressive power of the censor...." (How wonderful, thought Mrs. Hilary,
to be able to talk so like a book for so long together!) ... "give the
censor all the help we can ... keep the Unconscious in order by turning
its energies into some other channel ... give it a substitute.... The
energy involved in the intense desire for someone of another sex can be
diverted ... employed on some useful work. Libido ... it should all be
used. Find another channel for your daughter's libido.... Her life is
perhaps a rather vacant one?"

That Mrs. Hilary was able to reply to.

"Nan's? Vacant? Oh no. She is quite full of energy. Too full. Always
doing a thousand things. And she writes, you know."

"Ah. That should be an outlet. A great deal of libido is used up by that.
Well, her present strong desire for this man should be sublimated into a
desire for something else. I gather that her root trouble is lawlessness.
That can be cured. You must make her remember her first lawless action."
(Man's first disobedience and the fruit thereof, thought Mrs. Hilary.)

"O dear me," she said, "I'm afraid that would be impossible. When she was
a month old she used to attempt to dash her bottle onto the floor."

"People have even remembered their baptisms, when driven back to them by
analysis."

"Our children were not baptised. My husband was something of a Unitarian.
He said he would not tie them up with a rite against w