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

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.