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"Complexes," read Mrs. Hilary, "are of all sorts and sizes. " And there was a picture of four of them in a row, looking like netted cherry trees whose nets have got entangled with each other. So that was what they were like. Mrs. Hilary had previously thought of them as being more of the nature of noxious insects, or fibrous growths with infinite ramifications. Slim young trees. Not so bad, then, after all.
"A complex is characterised, and its elements are bound together by a specific emotional tone, experienced as feeling when the complex is aroused. Apart from the mental processes and corresponding actions depending on purely rational mental systems, it is through complexes that the typical mental process (the specific response) works, the particular complex representing the particular set of mental elements involved in the process which begins with perception and cognition and ends with the corresponding conation."