How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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Neuroses as False Compensations
When obstacles to compensation, external in social
adjustment, and internal in the art of living alone,
become too great, it is a common human tendency to
seek escape from, situations intolerable to our sense of
self-esteem in that vague limbo ot subjective “ make-
believe ” compensations which psychiatrists call neurotic
behaviour. Probably there is no human being who does
not show certain neurotic manifestations in some vital
activity. Men who find objective and real compensa¬
tions in their work often show neurotic patterns in so far
as their sexual activity is concerned, and women who
meet the problems of sexual union, marriage, or mother¬
hood, are sometimes neurotic in their desire to evade the
problems of earning a living. Mental normality is not
the rule, it is an ideal which we approach as a limit but
never completely attain. The purpose of this book is not
to demonstrate how to be a perfect human being, but to
illumine the major mistakes of unhappy living, and
indicate a method of substituting minor, unimportant
aberrations from the ideal for grave and tragic errors in
the fine art of living. The description of the neuroses^
which follows, therefore, is intended solely as a map of
a large portion of human life which may be avoided by
anyone who understands its dangers.
False compensations may be catalogued under several
headings. The artificial overcompensations of the
superiority complex occupy one. The whining protesta¬
tion of inferiority with its correlate appeal, “ I am so
unworthy, you must expect nothing of me!” falls into
another. The life patterns based on the neurotic “ ifs ”
and “ buts ” fall into still another category. The neuroses
which depend on a circumscription of the sphere of
activity to some unimportant sector of human activity,
and those neuroses which represent such a wide detour
about the obstacle that the individual becomes completely
perplexed in his way, form another group. One group of
neuroses commonly known as neurasthenia consists in