How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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CHAPTER TEN Patterns of Failure About Neuroses The Neurotic Decalogue—Types of Neuroses—Fallacies of Freudian Psychoanalysis—Adler and the Hormic Point of View—Fundamental Dynamics of Neurotic Behaviour—Techniques of Evasion—The Flight from Reality—“ Split Personality ” : a Neurotic Fiction— Suicide—The High Cost of Neurosis—Psychological “ Rackets ” and the Cure of Neuroses—How a Neurosis Is Cured—Who Shall Treat the Neurotic ? EVERY age and every people has its characteristic plagues. Locusts troubled the ancient Egyptians, the Black Death ravaged mediaeval Europe, syphilis spread like wild-fire during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, measles has decimated the South Sea Islanders, and yellow fever, until recently, has made the tropics uninhabitable for white men. The neurosis is the characteristic plague of the machine age. This insidious and almost universal condition affects every walk of modern life, nations as well as individuals, parents as well as children, capitalists as well as proletarians, intellectuals as well as morons, and you. Although the neurosis has never been so prevalent as it is to-day, its origins are veiled in prehistoric antiquity. The first written description of a neurosis is in the Book of Genesis. When Cain answered God “ Am I my brother’s keeper ? ” he voiced a typically neurotic rejoinder and betrayed a full-fledged neurosis (as did his parents when they blamed the serpent for their disobedience). The modern neurotic who says, “ I would marry but I am afraid I shall be impotent ” or his equally neurotic neighbour who believes, “ I could be happy if people did not treat me so badly ” ; the modern woman who excuses her idleness with the statement, “ I should like to work, but you cannot expect a woman to compete in