How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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CHAPTER THREE Of Obstacles Fear and Inferiority Seven Sources of the Inferiority Complex—-Of Physical Disabilities— Left-handedness—Beauty and Ugliness—The Family Constellation— Sex—Social, Economic, and Racial Determinants—Emotional Attitudes of Parents and Teachers—Parental Mistakes—Fallacies of Formal Education—Subjective Sources of Inferiority Feelings—The Role of Sexual Trauma. TN our first two chapters we sketched the concept of * living as a fine art and indicated some of the rules that govern the good life. In our second chapter we outlined the nature of the human material with which each individual is endowed, and specifically described man’s weakness as one of the most important data in his life. And we came to the conclusion that fear, ignorance, and discouragement were the chief enemies to successful self-sculpture. In the present chapter we shall deal more intimately with people and their problems, and trace the evolution of fear and inferiority from their seven sources in physical disability and disease, in the dynamics of the family situation, in sex, in social, economic and racial disabilities, in the emotional mistakes of parents and teachers, in the fallacies of formal education, and finally in a group of purely subjective individual misinterpretations of life and its values which do not logically fit into the other categories. i. Of Physical Disabilities It must be apparent to any observer of modern life that profound physical disabilities or diseases are a severe handicap in the competitive struggle for existence. The child who grows up with weak eyes, or the child who is handicapped in his breathing by tonsils and adenoids, the deaf child, the lame child, or the child with a damaged heart, begins life with a severe handicap, which, added