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

consults the physician. He consults the healer because he needs an official sanction for the removal of his symptoms, and he is willing to credit the most phantastic and nonsensical procedure with his pure. The patient, moreover, is morally obliged to credit the healer with supernatural abilities in ridding him of his formerly intractable neurosis. The neurotic noblesse oblige requires miracles. This accounts for the glamorous reputations of charlatans and faith-healers of all kinds, because no patient is so grateful as a neurotic who has “ dumped ” his neurosis. Of all the false procedures for treating neuroses, Christian Science is the most widespread and the most dangerous. The working principle of Christian Science is the distraction of the neurotic’s interest from his symptoms by emphasis on the non-existence of disease, accompanied by a certain measure of encouragement. The opportunity of attaining social significance at testimony meetings by the recital of one’s miraculous conquest of the forces of evil and sin is not without a certain therapeutic value. The cures ascribed to Christian Science are almost without exception examples of the cure of conversion neuroses. The “ cured ” Scientist says, often not without truth, that he was “ given up by all the doctors ”, only to be cured by reading Science and Health. Like all health cults Christian Science permits no objective examination of its “ cures ” by thoroughly qualified physicians. Christian Science is a psychological “ racket ”. If it is not a “ racket ” and if Christian Science is actually capable of accomplishing its avowed results by prayer and absent treatment then the Christian Science Church stands convicted of heinous and criminal negligence for not applying its doctrines in a wholesale fashion to the over-crowded wards of our city hospitals and curing all the patients whom doctors have really despaired of helping. Instead of demonstrating its therapeutic powers in open competition with the disciples of recognized medicine, the Christian Science practitioners content