How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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276 (canvas 296)
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apparently important piece of work. This is the “ red
herring ” principle applied to human conduct.
The detour neurotic attempts to throw the world off
his true scent. He is deserting from the battle-front of
life, and wants a medal for sprinting so well. In the
detour neuroses we find the flower of neurotic virtuosity.
Compulsion neurotics perform miracles of concentra¬
tion, application, and zeal in the perfect performance of
their cramped rituals. The same amount of energy
devoted to a useful end would bring them lavish praise
from their fellow-men and an objective basis for self¬
esteem.
The conversion neuroses belong to the category of the
detour neuroses. Here the “ red herring ” is a physical
symptom. The complex host of neurotic symptoms which
drive seventy per cent of patients to their physicians
belong in this category. Migraine, nervous indigestion,
some forms of asthma, so-called neurasthenia and
psychasthenia, a great many sexual symptoms such as
impotence, frigidity, the perversions, dyspareunia and
dysmenorrhoea, stuttering, neurotic disturbances of
circulation, palpitation of the heart and paroxysmal
tachycardia, neurotic itching, constipation and kindred
disorders, and a long list of physical symptoms which
cannot be enumerated in a general discussion of the
neuroses, are typical conversion neuroses.
The test of the neurotic character of a physical symptom
can be made in the following way : ask the sufferer what
he would do if he were immediately cured of his
symptoms. If his answer indicates that he would proceed
more courageously to solve any one of the three great
problems, you may be certain that the symptom is
neurotic and represents an unconsciously created obstacle
to the solution of a vital problem. Were the symptom
an actual organic disease, and the patient a normal
individual, he would go immediately to his physician
and get himself cured in the quickest and least dramatic
fashion possible, disregard the symptom, or reconcile
himself to it.