- created opinion, that its ascent is impossible. He does not turn
to the real impossibility, but to an artificial one, to a self-given limitation; thus he is in disharmony with himself, and from this moment has an internal conflict. Now insight into his cowardice will get the upper hand; now obstinacy and pride. In either case the libido is engaged in a useless civil war. Thus the man becomes incapable of any enterprise. He will never realize his wish to climb a mountain, and he goes perfectly astray as to his moral qualities. He is therefore less capable of performing his work, he is not fully adapted, he can be compared to a neurotic patient. The libido which withdrew from before this difficulty has neither led to honest self-criticism, nor to a desperate struggle to overcome the obstacle; it has only been used to maintain his cheap pretence that the ascent was really impossible, even heroic courage could have availed nothing. Such a reaction is called an infantile reaction. It is very characteristic of children, and of naïve minds, not to find the fault in their own shortcomings, but in external circumstances, and to impute to these their own subjective judgment. This man solves his problem in an infantile way, that is, he replaces the suitable mode of adaptation of our former case by a mode of adaptation belonging to the infantile mind. This is regression. His libido withdraws from an obstacle which cannot be surmounted, and replaces a real action by an infantile illusion. These cases are very commonly met with in practice among neurotics. I will remind you here of those well-known cases in which young girls become hysterical with curious suddenness just when they are called upon to decide about their engagements. As an instance, I should like to describe to you the case of two sisters, separated only by one year in age. They were similar in capacities and characters; their education was the same; they grew up in the same surroundings, and under the influence of their parents. Both were healthy; neither the one nor the other showed any nervous symptoms. An attentive observer might have discovered that the elder daughter was the more beloved by the parents. This affection depended on a certain sensitiveness which this daughter showed. She asked for more affection than the younger one, was also somewhat precocious and more serious. Besides, she showed some charming childish traits, just those things which, through
