How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.

so-called psychological novel and drama. It is the open season for self-styled “ psychologists ”. Intelligent, “ normal ” adults have a right to demand a common-sense treatise on the science of human relations. If modern psychiatry has a valid message, that message can be given in terms intelligible to educated readers. It is an auspicious portent that the intelligent layman is interested in the newer developments of modern science as part of his spiritual orientation. The crisis of modern civilization has turned men to the consideration of their own basic personality problems. They want to know the whys and the wherefores of human behaviour, as never before in history, and they want to know how, moreover, they can avoid the personality disasters that strike their fellows with alarming frequency on every side. It is to meet this need that the author has essayed the task of writing a Baedeker of the soul. The present volume was undertaken to fill the gap between scientific but technical texts on psychopathology, and existing, over-simplified, and frequently unsound primers of psychological information. In preparing the text, the author has attempted to avoid writing “just another theoretical book on psychology ”, and at the same time, to escape the accusation of being totally devoid of a sense of humour by adding to the existing over-supply of “ tabloid ” psychology. The idea of writing a book which would attempt to steer the difficult course between the Scylla of psychiatric obscurantism and the Charybdis of pre-digested psy¬ chology, was relegated to the limbo of vague agenda until the author’s belief in the desirability of such a book was echoed by a variety of requests from the most diverse sources. In the beginning these requests came chiefly from patients who wished to supplement the work of their own analyses with a book which would present the scope and meaning of psychological re-education. Further requests originated from those who, having been enlightened and liberated by their own adventures in the reconstruction of their vital attitudes and the re-direction of their vital patterns, desired a book to place in the hands