How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.

weakness and folly of women, and were usually delivered in the presence of strangers. I advised my patient to procure a little soap-box and wait until her husband was in the course of an especially flowery harangue at a dinner party. Without saying a word she brought out the soap-box and placed it neatly before him. That was the husband’s last lecture. Valid Uses of “ Plus Gestures ” Unpleasant as the “ plus gestures ” of the superiority complex are, the principle of “ plus gestures ” is a very practical one when applied to an individual with an inferiority complex. Men and women vary a good deal in the range of “ plus gestures ” which give them a subjective sense of superiority. “Plus gestures” never cure an inferiority complex—but they are important aids in establishing that first subjective feeling of power and ability on which further training in social usefulness may be based. There is a story of a hen-pecked labourer who was browbeaten almost to a pulp by his wife, until one day, while working in a road excavation, the boss gave him a red flag and let him direct traffic. He stopped a shining limousine full of bejewelled ladies for a full ten minutes with his little red flag. He came home a changed man, ordered his wife to cook his favourite dish and generally asserted his newly discovered dignity, much to his wife’s delight. The red flag was a “ plus gesture ” which gave him a new sense of importance on which he could construct a sense of security and significance. It is my usual practice to prescribe new hats, facial massages, permanent waves, fashionable lotions, new perfume, expensive gloves, or a new handbag for women in the early stages of depression or melancholia. One of my patients who lived in the depths of depression in a cheap furnished room in a noisy street was constrained, under violent protest, to move into a sunny room in a fashionable hotel. His self-esteem rose like a rocket when he could invite the few remaining friends he had retained to his new quarters. Within a month he had