How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
233/400
- Publication/creation
- London : George Routledge, 1932.
- Physical description
- xiv, 374 pages ; 22 cm
- Contributors
- Wolfe, W. Béran 1900-1935.
- Notes
-
This edition was reprinted in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1948.
Copy 1 Note: 1937 reprint. X158203
- Attribution and usage
-
Wellcome Collection
Conditions of use: it is possible this item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
The image contains the following text:
decadent civilizations are characterized by their tendencies
toward sexual orgy and debauchery. Indeed, it may
almost be stated as a psychological law than when anyone
elects to fight on one of life’s fronts to the exclusion of the
other two, he is a discouraged and neurotic human being.
Prostitution is the concrete expression of this tendency
to make a business of sex. The prostitute, the pimp, the
Don Juan, the Messalina, the “ polite adulterers ” of
Floyd Dell, are all attempting to make sex the be-all and
end-all of life. No wonder Freud believed that all
neuroses were based on sexual aberrations—-the first place
in which a neurosis becomes evident is the sexual sphere.
Those who seek farther and deeper in the springs of
human understanding can see the true relationship, and
thus discover the unity of all neuroses as evasions, greater
or less, of the complete solution of life’s problems.
It is not enough to be a sexual virtuoso—one must
follow up the attack on the other fronts as well. The
people who consistently follow the attack strategy are
frequently the envy of their fellows. One of my patients,
who belonged to the strategists of this school, expressed
the essential philosophy of this type very well when he
said : “ What’s the use of slaving at a job in an office all
day long when the only thing in the world worth having
is a beautiful woman’s love ? That is the true intoxication
of life. Nothing else really matters. Show me a beautiful
and unattainable woman, and I will lay siege to her as a
general would lay siege to a fortress. No matter what the
cost, no matter what the effort, success is worth while
when it comes. It is the greatest and most thrilling game
in the world. Every woman can be had—if you go about
it in the right way. It’s an art, and one has to be an artist
in love. There is no more exalting triumph than the
triumph over a beautiful and haughty woman. I’d rather
spend one night with such a woman than build the
Panama Canal !
The men and women—and they are about equal in
number—who follow this plan of campaign, naturally
develop a sexual technique as highly specialized as the