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

a private system of logic and reason, we call that man insane, and his ideas hallucinations or delusions.) It is very difficult to be really objective aboiit yourself unless you have learned to look at yourself with the eyes of another. Many people still believe there is something slightly disgraceful about a psychological analysis and re-education, as if consulting a psychiatrist about a problem of conduct were an admission of mental incompetence. Nothing could be farther from the truth, for the merit of any system of psychological re-education lies chiefly in the fact that a good psychiatrist helps the patient to get an objective bird’s-eye view of his own pattern of conduct. When the patient sees himself and the unconscious processes of his behaviour with the psychiatrist’s objective eye, the patient must finally do something about it himself. All the psychiatrist can do is point the way toward mental maturity, and encourage his pupil, for he is more a pupil than a patient, to go on by himself. But it is very difficult to get the average man to admit that his pattern of conduct is not mature and even more difficult to make him see that he knows little about his inner self despite the fact that he has been living with himself all his life. “ But doctor, I know myself like a book !' I know myself much better than anyone else does ! ” is the common retort when a psychiatrist questions the motives and purposes of an individual’s conduct. Most people believe that they know themselves extremely well, and it is difficult indeed to get a man to admit he is not a good judge of human nature. As a matter of fact it is the rarest of human beings who knows more than a few superficial and unconnected data about himself. Most of us are complete strangers to our deeper selves. A man may know that he likes to play golf, and that he is irritated by snobs, and that he prefers blue neckties, but he can seldom give you a psychologically valid reason for his actions and reactions. A woman may know why she does not eat bread and potatoes, but she would resent the imputation that her