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

sure, these symptoms may be the expression of organic disease, and it requires a psychiatrist well versed both in medicine and psychology to determine whether a given symptom is part of a physical ailment or whether, as in the case of pathological blushing, sweating, palpitation of the heart, tremors, and neuralgia, there is not some underlying psychological purpose which the patient attains by means of his symptoms. Not infrequently, a real physical condition is developed into a psychological symptom, and many men and women burdened by an inferiority complex make a profession of some trivial or minor ailment because in gaining the attention and care of a capable, but psychologically unschooled, physician, they effectively attain the “ extenuating circumstances ” with which they justify their evasion of life’s problems. In recent years, with the rise of modern mental hygiene, not a few patients have been able to trick the best-intentioned psychiatrist by prolonging their psychological analyses from months into years, thus effectively removing themselves from the battlefront of life. ' The second group of manifestations deals with the problems of social life. Here the inferiority complex manifests itself in some well-disguised or overt misan¬ thropy. Few people realize that the criminal and the social snob have a common denominator of social maladjustment. Jealousy and envy, the cult of unique¬ ness, overzealous family pride, or its projection, pro¬ fessional patriotism, are manifestations of the inferiority complex. Uncouthness in manners, exotic dress, slovenliness in keeping appointments, inconsiderateness, apathy to the problems of human suffering, a dislike of children and animals, social isolation, whether in the form of a hermit life or in the artificial isolation of class and family consciousness which we usually term snobbish¬ ness, are further evidences of mental immaturity and social maladjustment. Here also belong shyness and timidity, arrogance, racial and religious bigotry, the “ will-to-be-first ”, chronic procrastination and doubt,