Understanding yourself : the mental hygiene of personality / by Ernest R. Groves.

  • Ernest R. Groves
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Understanding yourself : the mental hygiene of personality / by Ernest R. Groves. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with life or closer to happiness than the countenance of each suggests. It is easy to see anxiety stamped on the faces of some, occasionally even fear. Determination, courage, hurry, sadness, anger, illness, lassitude, boredom, suspicion, and inferiority appear portrayed, but rarely happiness. When one thinks of this, it seems strange, since happiness is with¬ out doubt the most universal of all human cravings. I ven¬ ture that no one has long sat in those comfortable chairs, looking out at the continuous procession of people, with¬ out finding himself pondering the meaning of it all. Is happiness a futile quest, an ever elusive goal, socially useful because it tricks people into strivings and struggles which, although fruitless for the individual, keep the sap of life flowing? Such questions are sure to arise just as they have since men first began to meditate upon the meaning of human life and to search their experiences thoughtfully. Why do people continue to seek what they so rarely gain ? Why do they expect happiness in the future when they know they have not found it in the past? What does it take to make a man happy? If people were to exchange places, would some find happiness where others have failed ?, Sooner or later, out of such thinking, there pops the question that underlies all the others: What does it take to make a person happy ? In spite of the fact that the term happiness, like the well- secured coin in financial transactions, circulates so freely in our conversation, it is a tricky word when we insist upon [6]