How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
206/400
- Publication/creation
- London : George Routledge, 1932.
- Physical description
- xiv, 374 pages ; 22 cm
- Contributors
- Wolfe, W. Béran 1900-1935.
- Notes
-
This edition was reprinted in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1948.
Copy 1 Note: 1937 reprint. X158203
- Attribution and usage
-
Wellcome Collection
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of the other sex. The sophisticated tell stories about the
ignorant, whites tell jokes about negroes, Gentiles tell
jokes about Jews, adults tell jokes about children, English¬
men tell jokes about Germans, and so on down the line.
Dostoievsky once wrote that he could tell more about a
man by listening to his laughter than he could learn
from a long psychological examination. If you wish to
test the dynamic patterns of your neighbour—it is wise
to try this out on yourself first—ask for his three favourite
stories, interpret the “ dynamic drift ” in much the same
way that you would interpret a dream, and you will
learn his goal and his technique of life very quickly.
Like the dream which establishes a mood or an
emotional attitude by the use of an illicit, unconscious
metaphor, the joke, the pun, the humorous anecdote,
achieves its end, as training of the personality in its path
toward its individual goal, by the cheap means of an
irresponsible ego-inflation. Like the neurosis, wit and
the joke utilize common-sense facts as the premises of
the story, but, by a species of psychic legerdemain,
substitute a system of private logic which is tangent with
the common-sense premise at various points, and thus
lead the listener imperceptibly into a situation which
vouchsafes him an illicit sense of power derived from the
depreciation and humiliation of the villain-antagonist in
the inferior situation.
The cultivation of laughter and a sense of humour is
excellent training for the good life. There is no better
method of establishing a bond between yourself and your
fellow-men than to cultivate a genial and humorous
personality. Only those who feel reasonably safe and
successful can afford to laugh. The forced tragedy
of the lives of the unhappy is usually the result of
their isolation. No man can laugh when he is isolated
from his fellows, because he is in immediate danger
of mental strangulation. To those who find the rewards
of isolation very meagre we prescribe the following :
find a good story and tell it to at least one person
during the day. If the first person you tell the story