The difference between neurotics and normal people is a matter only of degree, Freud says in the last Clark lecture: we all “entertain a life of fantasy in which we like to make up for the insufficiencies of reality by the production of wish fulfillments.” In distinction from the successful man of action who is able to impose his wishes on reality, or the artist who transforms them into works of art, the neurotic escapes from reality through his symptoms.
