How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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How can I clarify this man’s position for him and help
him out of his difficulties ? ” The good psychiatrist,
seeing a neurotic patient, says, “ There, but for the grace
of a little courage, go I.” Indeed the ideal attitude for
those who would cure neuroses is not so much one of
doctor and patient as that of a friendly teacher and his
pupil.
This chapter should not be closed without a friendly
warning. There is no human being who does not have
this or that neurotic trait. We are all neurotics, for
normality does not exist except as an ideal limit of human
behaviour. The reader is urged not to label himself a
neurotic because he finds one neurotic mechanism in his
life. It is not the function of mental hygiene to make
angels, but to prevent flesh-and-blood human beings
from crippling their activities and plunging themselves
into wholly unnecessary unhappiness. Our purpose in
this book is solely to demonstrate the art of transforming
major mistakes into minor aberrations, of avoiding useless
pitfalls, of minimizing tendencies which if unchecked lead
to the asylum and the mortuary.
Anyone who understands the dynamics of the neurosis
must realize that the cure of any neurosis consists in
education, the extension of mental horizons, the develop¬
ment of greater human sympathies, arid the encourage¬
ment to face obstacles in reality. No neurosis is inexor¬
able. There is no cause for any neurosis except the cause
the neurotic chooses to blame for his shortcomings.
Given an understanding of the neurosis, the desire to
find a better way, and the encouragement of one other
human being (even if indirectly through the written
word), and anyone can modify or minimize his neurosis.
There is no situation, either in the heredity or the
environment of any individual, which can compel him to
be neurotic. These hereditary factors and these vicious
environmental conditions can explain the genesis of a
neurosis, but they cannot maintain it in the face of the
desire to get well. Anyone who is human can attain a
degree of normality consistent with happiness.