The path that leads from imagination to reality is the path of art. The artist is someone who is driven by extremely powerful instinctual needs; he desires to gain honor, glory, power, wealth, fame, and love from women, but lacks the means to satisfy them.

Thus, like anyone else with unfulfilled desires, he turns away from reality and redirects his interest and libido towards the desires of his fantasies. A true artist knows how to process his daydreams so that they lose the personal elements that would disturb outsiders and can be enjoyed by others.

He also knows how to temper them, so that their origin from forbidden sources is not easily recognizable. Furthermore, he possesses the mysterious ability to reshape certain material until it becomes a faithful replica of his fantasies, and he knows how to imbue the reflections of his fantasies with such a great flow of pleasure that, at least for a moment, the repressions seem to sway and collapse.

Every time he achieves this, he opens the way for others to relieve and satisfy their own unconscious sources of pleasure and earns their gratitude and admiration; he gains - through his imagination - what he previously earned only in his fantasy: glory, power, and the love of women.

[Excerpt from the introduction of the edition]