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

in the same factory in which his father was a foreman. John B. had hated his father since his early childhood, and the factory symbolized his father’s power to him. The logic of reality compelled him to1 work for a living, but his scheme of apperception was directed, not to making the best of his situation, but to finding an escape from what he considered humiliating and intolerable work. The fact that he was a good workman and could have advanced easily did not lessen his dislike of working in the same factory with his father. Unconsciously, he was on the look-out for accidents, and whenever anything went wrong in a factory that had had an almost unbroken record of freedom from industrial accidents, John B. was almost certain to be found bleeding or maimed. We can imagine that this man’s goal could be stated in the formula : “I wish to advance beyond my cruel father by becoming an artist instead of a workman.” Reality prevented him from attaining his goal, and instead he found himself in the most unfavourable situation of working in the very factory where his father’s power was a distinct handicap. His secondary surrogate goal became : “ I must get out of this intolerable situation.” To accomplish this end he found no better way than to destroy himself by his own inefficiency. He looked for accidents unconsciously, and, when he was injured, he could say to himself and to his father, “ You see, I am in the wrong place. I must get out of this factory.” It seems almost unbelievable that a man would injure himself to the extent of completely destroying the function of an arm, but from the psychological point of view, this is not at all uncommon. In a fashion John B.’s accident is comparable to a “ little ” suicide, and has the same psychological meaning. Accidents do not occur so frequently in a well regulated factory, and surely not just to one man, unless that man exercises an unconscious training to get in their way. To be guilty of this form of criminal negligence, directed not against society, but against himself, John B. had only to disregard normal precautions and care.