“[The neurotic] draws back [from his life tasks] not because of any real impossibility but because of an artificial barrier invented by himself…From this moment on he suffers from an internal conflict. Now the realization of his cowardice gains the upper hand, now defiance and pride. In either case his [energy] is engaged in a useless civil war, and the man becomes incapable of any new enterprise…His efficiency is reduced, he is not fully adapted, he has become – in a word – neurotic.”