How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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depends upon our interpretation of our own inferiority situa¬ tion and our idea of superiority and totality, and not on the facts as they are.) An example is the very undernourished child who stated that she wanted to be the fat lady in the circus. Another is the son of a railway magnate who wanted to be a porter at St. Pancras Station. 5. Any individual life is a pattern from a situation believed and considered a “ minus ” toward a goal believed and considered a “ plus ”. Once the goal idea and the goal situa¬ tion has been fixed in the unconscious, it acts as a magnet which directs all human activities towards itself. The small boy wants to be a fireman because he is dissatisfied with “ small¬ boyishness ”, and sees in the glamour of the clanging fire engines a situation of “ plus ”. He does not' say he is dissatisfied with being a small boy, but he acts as //he felt dissatisfied. Dwarfs aspire to be giants—giants never want to be dwarfs. A young boy wants to be a doctor “ So I can stick the needles in people’s arms ”. To this boy the hypodermic syringe is the symbol of complete power. All human lives are a pattern from an imagined weakness to an imagined strength, from impotence to power, from insignificance to significance. 6. A human being cannot do anything outside his pattern. This is true all through the world of nature. Elephants do not grow humming-bird wings nor do oaks suddenly produce pomegranates. Elephants and oaks must be elephants and oaks from start to finish. The complete unity of any individual pattern is one of the most important laws of psychology. Everything we do, think, desire, fear, avoid, cherish, love, or hate, fits into our unit pattern. That is why dreams, early childhood recollections, our favourite film actors, our favourite sports, our antipathies, the clothes we wear, the way we shake hands, our gait, our habits, our handwriting, our physiognomy, our choice of foods, friends, recreations, hobbies and wives must fit into the same pattern. Fortune tellers, who are shrewd judges of human nature, detectives, artists, playwrights, all make use of this fact of the unity of the personality. If we go to a play in which a character