“The more I explore neurosis, the more I become aware that it is a modern form of romanticism. It stems from the same source, a hunger for perfection, an obsession with living out what one has imagined, and if it is found to be illusory, a rejection of reality, the power to imagine and not to sustain one’s endurance, and then the creative force turned into destruction.
"Many of the romantics destroyed themselves because they could not attain the absolute, in love or creation. They could not attain it because it was invented. It was a myth. The neurotic acts in the same way. He sets himself impossible goals, imaginary goals. He will win the respect and admiration of a parent who is not even alive any more (appealing to his substitutes). He will gain the love of the world by giving the world something it may not want. He will seek union with opposites, perverse contrary relationships with those who turn away. He will seek to conquer the unconquerable. Like the romantic, he is creative, and may apply his power to invention to art, science, history.”
–Anais Nin, The Diary, Volume Two