sideration. "Whatever else the blues
accomplish, they certainly afford us a chance to submerge ourselves
in a sea of self-engrossment."[63]

[Footnote 63: Putnam: _Human Motives_.]

=The Chip on the Shoulder.= It helps to know that irritability and
over-sensitiveness are usually the result of tension from unsatisfied
desires which must find some kind of outlet. If a person is secretly
restive under the fact that he cannot have the kind of clothes he
wants, cannot shine in society, or secure a college education or a
large fortune,--all of which minister to our insistent and rarely
satisfied instinct of self-assertion,--or if he is secretly yearning
for the satisfaction of the marriage relation, or for the sense of
completion in parenthood; then the tension from these unsatisfied
desires shows itself in a hundred little everyday instances of lack of
self-control. These mystify him and his friends, but they are
understandable when the whole truth is known.

=Anxiety and Fear.= Nowhere is understanding more valuable than when
we approach the subject of anxiety and fear. Whenever a person falls
into a state of abnormal fear, his friends and his physician spend a
good deal of time in attempting to prove to him that there is no cause
for apprehension, and in exhorting him to use his reason and give up
his fear. But how can a person help himself when he is fighting in the
dark? How can he free himself when the thing he thinks he fears is
merely a symbol of what he really fears? The woman who was afraid she
would choke her child had been several months in the hands of
Christian Scientists, and had earnestly tried to replace fear with
courage. But in the circumstances, and without further knowledge, this
was as impossible as it is for a man to lift himself by his own
boot-straps. She had no point of contact with her real fear, as the
man has no leverage contact with the earth from which he wishes to
lift himself.

To be sure there are many cases in which an assumed cheerfulness and
courage do have a mighty effect on the inner man. The forces of the
personality are not set, but plastic, and are constantly acting and
interacting upon one another. Surface habits do influence the forces
below the surface. William James's advice, "Square your shoulders,
speak in a major key, smile, and turn a compliment," is good for most
occasions, but sometimes even a little understanding of the cause is
far more effective.

It helps to know