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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    the same just and objective way they would other people their self-life with its resources and liabilities. Plato and Aristotle, centuries ago, taught that it was the beginning of wisdom to get well acquainted with one’s self. This also had been the message of Socrates to the people of his city, and three more sound-minded teachers it would be difficult to find in all the centuries of human civilization. How often one hears it said that others know us better than we know ourselves. This means that nobody can be truly known except as an objective, detached human being. He who stands outside is free from the entanglement of personal bias and has an aloofness which, however easily we have it toward others, each of us finds it hard to have concerning ourself. True as this is, it does not tell the full story, for there is an important part of every life that the outsider can never directly know. That is the meaning to each of us of the experiences through which we go. The picture that he who stands outside sees is as partial in its way as that which he, standing within, has. A great part of the significance of our life is our unspoken reaction to the things we do, what we think, and what we desire. This ever-flowing stream of feeling is no small part of ourself, and it is just this which must forever be concealed from others. This territory of the ego can be explored only by those who gain the necessary courage and skill. We are very apt, when we turn into this hidden portion of the self, to go searching for evidences of strength and to make our investigation a method of bolstering up our [ 16 ]