PART II. The Psychology of the Neuroses

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE NEUROSES

Personally, I am more and more convinced that the cure for sentiment, as for all the weakened forms of strong things, is not to refuse to feel it, but to get to feel more in it. This seems to me to make the whole difference between a true and a false ‘asceticism.’ The false goes for getting rid of what one is afraid of; the true goes for using it and making it serve. The one empties, the other fills; the one abstracts, the other concentrates. Don’t you think half the troubles of life come from being wrongly afraid of things--especially afraid of oneself? (February, 1890.)

Richard Lewis Nettleship.