Understanding yourself : the mental hygiene of personality / by Ernest R. Groves.
- Ernest R. Groves
- Date:
- [1935]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Understanding yourself : the mental hygiene of personality / by Ernest R. Groves. Source: Wellcome Collection.
34/296 (page 22)
![quality that distinguishes the human, but only man, among all the animals, is blessed and cursed by self- consciousness. It cannot be denied that a great many of the problems of human happiness are a product of this unique power that man among all the living things we know alone possesses. It is also true that problems that originate else¬ where may be influenced for good or ill by the reaction of the individual in his own consciousness. For example, the feeling of fear that accompanies heart shock illustrates how easily trouble in the body may be increased by one’s emotional reaction to it. Most of the battles that we fight are conflicts that take place within consciousness. Indeed, we are so often occupied with our own thinking and feel¬ ing that we are apt to consider what we know as conscious¬ ness as ourself and to regard the body,, in spite of its im¬ mense complexity, as a mere instrument to be used by self-consciousness in the same manner that we use tools. As we shall later see, this interpretation of the personality cannot be maintained in the light of facts that we now know. Yet it is true that what consciousness does to the body leads us in our uncritical thought to regard the latter as a docile servant. It will not do in a genuine effort to make the most of oneself to become partisan of either the mind or body, reflex, instinct, or self-consciousness. Instead we have to conceive of ourself as a personality which includes enor¬ mous physiological and psychic activities, needs, and [22]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29815150_0034.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
