How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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not for the fact that we can see the growth of irresponsi¬
bility throughout the entire history of the dementia
praecox sufferer’s life, the phenomenological data might
lead us to believe that such a splitting.was actual and real.
The hermits and the wasters, the childish dreamer, the
phantastic psychotks who believe in their own deity, the
false Messiahs and the false Christs are examples of the
tendency to withdraw from reality and substitute a world
of phantastic ideas which offer no risk and impose no real
test of the personality. It stands to reason that a man who
isolates himself and retreats from the battle-front of life
finally stands alone. The symbol of that aloneness is
Jesus Christ or the Messiah. The truth of this contention
is attested by the fact that the men and women who are
facing the problems of life, who cooperate and contribute
to the commonweal, are individual and unique because
of the character of their contributions. But those who run
away from life can run in only one direction. For this
reason all the men and women in the dementia prsecox
ward of a great asylum look and act alike, whereas the
men on the firing-front of the world, the Einsteins, the
Pasteurs, the Kreislers, differ vastly in their appearance
and their behaviour. In severe cases of dementia pnecox
there is a progressive deterioration of the personality
leading to pitiful dilapidation. These people become
veritable human vegetables, the least common
denominators of human life.
Suicide
5. Evasion of reality by the destruction of the self. The
fifth strategy of the neurosis is suicide. This is the last
emergency exit open to those who lack the courage to live
and to face reality. The philosophy of the suicide is never
a brave one. When a human being commits suicide he
does so because this seems the best way out of his
difficulties. That suicide solves no problems must be
apparent to any normal human being, but perhaps every
human being has been so discouraged at one time or